320 
SAVAGE SUDAN 
bunting's, pytelias, fire-finches, and cut-throats (feathered), 
wood-hoopoes, warblers, coucals, glossy starlings — in 
short, the whole passerine population. Within a given 
minute, weaver-finches in timorous clouds swept down 
a score of times, alighted for half a second, then as 
instantly, in mighty flutteration, rose again —too nervous 
to drink! But nervous they may well be—and with 
reason. For these sequestered water-holes, few and far 
between, afford Utopian hunting - grounds to eagles, 
hawks, and raptores of every denomination. Here 
Bush-Cuckoo ('Centropus Superciliosus). 
Coming Down to Drink. 
violence reigns supreme and tragedies are incessant. 
Suddenly, round some bush-clad point, flashes a hawk 
{Melierax gabar\ whips into the terrified crowd, clutches 
one victim ere it can gain shelter ; a second which, in 
panic, had grazed the ground—a smart right-and-left 
within 6 feet of our eyes! Then a great white-headed 
eagle flaps slowly by, bearing, suspended from bushy 
talon, what appears a table-cloth. The eagle directs an 
upward course to some tall tree, where for the next 
half-hour we can watch him dismembering his victim— 
a spoonbill, probably, or a great white egret, for Aquila 
non caftit muscas (and table-cloths still less). 
Through and through that helpless, hapless throng—all 
rounded-up, remember, by thirst -—there sheer peregrines 
and lanner-falcons, dealing death and destruction while 
