616 
Colonel S. R. Clarke on 
[Ibis, 
namajuus , o£ which we shot one specimen. There were a 
good many Vultures about our camps, and their numbers 
increased as we approached the Kafue. 
My son killed a lioness one evening not far from our 
tents, and had her gralloched, intending to have her 
carried into camp to be skinned by the fire ; she proved 
to be too heavy to carry, so she was skinned where she 
fell ; that night two lions, probably looking for her, roared 
round camp till just before daylight. The next morning 
we rode out in different directions, but though out for 
four hours not a head of game could we see ; we concluded 
the noise made by the lions had shifted the bucks. On 
my way back to camp I thought that I would visit the 
carcase of the lioness to see if anything had been to it; both 
the carcase and the gralioch lay untouched, and in the grass 
around them and perched on trees above were some forty 
vultures, apparently Pstudogyps africanus. 1 offer no com¬ 
ment as to whether vultures recognize lion’s flesh, but I am 
sure that if the body (to say nothing of the entrails) had 
been that of a fair-sized buck, the party I saw would have 
started to eat it at once, and' that all would have been finished 
in twenty minutes. Before this episode I had seen three 
carcases of lions left untouched by vultures though they had 
been killed two or three days previously, but at that time in 
that country (the Loietai plains, B. E. A.) vultures were not 
so plentiful as they were on the Kafue, and the herds of buck 
were far more numerous. 
Besides the Fishing Eagles the Bateleur was common, 
and a specimen or two with apparently a light grey back 
were seen but not obtained. Two or three times eagles were 
seen to strike at birds : I saw, I believe, a Circaetus make a 
stoop at a Pternistes standing on a bare patch of ground ; the 
latter escaped by springing into the air at the last moment. 
I have seen Ptarmigan in Scotland evade the Golden Eagle 
in the same way. A Darter attacked by a Fishing Eagle 
tumbled headlong into the water ; and a Marsh-Owl (Asio 
capensis) that I had marked down and was dismounting to 
shoot was swooped at by a small dark eagle—the owl mounted 
