654 REPORT OF THE HARVARD AFRICAN EXPEDITION 
FALCONIFORMES 
FALCONIDAE 
Aviceda cuculoides cuculoides Swainson. West African Cuckoo-falcon 
Aviceda cuculoides Swainson, Birds W. Africa, vol. 1, p. 104, pl. 1, 1837: West Africa. 
Length about 15 inches; body and wings above slaty black, neck brown with white feather- 
bases; upper tail-coverts banded black and white; sides of head and the fore neck gray; below 
white, broadly banded on the breast with rusty and on flanks with slaty; belly white; tail black 
with gray cross-bands and a white tip. Cere, feet, and iris yellow. West Africa from Gambia to 
Angola. 
We did not see this faleon, and it probably avoids the forested parts of the 
country in general for Lowe found it ‘‘tolerably common but extremely shy” on 
the southern coast at Nana Kru, where he secured a male, January 22, 1911. 
There are but three other records of it: Biittikofer saw one pair at Buluma, 
Fisherman Lake, on an abandoned plantation and secured the male (1885); 
Stampfli collected a female on the Junk River (Bittikofer 1886, p. 247); and 
later one was collected at Schieffelinsville (Biittikofer, 1888, p. 66). 
Milvus migrans parasitus (Daudin). African Black Kite 
Falco parasitus Daudin, Traité d’Ornith., vol. 2, p. 150, 1800: South Africa. 
A medium-sized species, with long wings, and a long notched tail, length about 22 inches; 
general color dark reddish brown, the feathers with blackish central streaks; sides of head and 
throat whitish, tail and wings indistinctly cross-banded. Africa and Madagascar. 
Bittikofer (1885, p. 155) regarded this as the commonest bird of prey in 
Liberia, nesting in silk-cotton trees along large rivers, especially in open country 
near the coast, all the way to Cape Palmas. He records (1886, p. 247) a speci- 
men from the Junk River, the stomach of which contained grasshoppers. Lowe 
also speaks of it as common along the coast. He secured a male at Nifu and noted 
them coming to a grass fire. Apparently it avoids the area of heavy forest in the 
interior for we saw nothing of it in our traverse of the country until nearly back 
to the coast at Moylakwelli, on the St. Paul’s River where a lone bird, descend- 
ing by a series of downward sweeps, came to alight on one of the tall silk-cotton 
trees by the village. From here back to the coast there was a pair at almost every 
considerable town. Compared with the East African representative of this 
species, the Liberian birds were much more wary, seldom coming within gunshot, 
and lacking the boldness of their eastern relatives which so frequently Swoop 
down to pick up bits of meat almost at one’s feet. At Suen we saw three kites 
which perched at times in a large silk-cotton tree in the midst of the village, but 
did not appear to disturb the large colony of Black and Yellow Weaver-birds 
in it. About the city of Monrovia we did not see kites. 
