inability to shoot one, for they flew very high and we never could find their roosts. One day Dr. Allen was riding along the road, mounted as usual on a small, gray donkey, his gun across the saddle-bow. A flock came flying over, the collector raised his gun, fired, replaced his gun, caught the bird in his lap, wrapped it up and dropped it into his bag, without the donkey ever changing his pace or wagging an ear. I call this a good performance, but as a gameshooting companion often remarks, "They do come easy, sometimes."

I want to say a word about the indicators, or honey guides, which have caused so much comment from all African travellers. We found two kinds. The natives call them "Manóch" and treat them to a great deal of ceremony and a little set speech, the meaning of which we did not get. Most ornithologists concur, I think, in the belief that the honey guides do not guide, but merely attract one to honey by their presence in its neighborhood. There was one bird, however, at Mangangani, which persistently followed me about, and chattered in an amazing manner. I thought I never would shake him off, and I am almost convinced that he was following me and talking to me, too.

We got ten species of hawks, eight of thrushes, eleven of old world warblers, seven of shrikes and bush shrikes, and eleven of ploceids or weavers. Several of the ploceids are kinds seen commonly in cages. The long tailed Paradise Whydah, with rectrices. that certainly impede its progress, and the beautiful little Cordonblue of aviculturalists. This little gem of bright cobalt blue, so delicate and short-lived in captivity, was everywhere common, and associated in little flocks with the Small Red Weaver, Lagonosticta senegala. These little mixed flocks were most confiding, and we saw them everywhere.

The ostrich, which is rare, we did not get a sight of. It, with various species of cranes, storks, herons and the Giant Hornbill, is protected by law.

Most of the resident Blue-Nile birds belong to Abyssinian types, and are therefore different from the White-Nile forms only a short distance away. The mammals also tend towards Abyssinian, rather than central African forms.

Early workers in the eastern Sudan and Abyssinia were Rüppell

and von Heuglin, while of late years Reichenow, Neumann and others have done a great deal of systematic work. Mr. A. L. Butler, present Superintendent of Game Preservation at Khartoum, has given us interesting papers on Sudan birds since 1905. He is a keen observer, and has the interests of the great game and the birds very much at heart. He has been instrumental in many reforms such as limiting the slaughter of the sand-grouse near Khartoum, protecting the giraffe, etc. It is hoped that the Government will always be able to find such men, and that the policy of no arms for the Arabs and large sanctuaries for the game animals can be continued.

Were space sufficient, I should like to speak of many of the other groups. We had to leave just when some of the birds were begining to assume their spring plumage and to sing. A little later the common weavers change from dull browns to orange, yellows and reds, and must be a gorgeous sight.

The Sudan has a curious attraction, and what it is no man can say, but as I look back I think of two pictures; one a crisp February morning breakfasting by candle light and watching the complaining camels as they are led in out of the still dusky thorn trees, while the first flights of cranes and weavers appear against a pale pink dawn. Next it is noon on a winding path amid the sweet smelling thorn bush. Nothing is heard but the tireless scuff-scuff of my camels' feet, on the dusty path, while hornbills flap from the branches as we pass, and the sun blares down through the leafless trees.

THE FERRUGINOUS ROUGH-LEG, ARCHIBUTEO FER

RUGINEUS IN MONTANA.

BY E. S. CAMERON.

Plates XIV-XVIII.

NESTING.

THIS splendid bird is undoubtedly the most powerful hawk met with in Montana, where it is usually called eagle, and its carrying power is remarkable as the sequel will show. It does no harm, but, on the contrary, wages unceasing warfare against such pests as prairie dogs (Cynomys), gophers (Thomomys), and meadow mice (Arvicola), and should therefore be universally protected; nevertheless it has unfortunately become very scarce, excepting in one or two favored localities where it is strictly preserved. Although a good deal has been written about the Ferruginous Rough-leg, as the hawk is called in the American Ornithologists' Union Check-list, I am not aware that it has hitherto been studied or photographed at the nest. It used to be abundant in Montana, as evidenced by the fact that Dr. J. A. Allen found it "next to Falco sparverius, the most common species of the Falconidae," and himself discovered several nests containing young. He continues: "The nest is often a very large bulky structure, sometimes three or four feet in diameter, built of coarse sticks, mixed with the ribs of antelopes and buffaloes. It is placed on the ground or rocks, usually near the summit of isolated buttes. The same nest is apparently occupied for a series of years and annually repaired."

I have seen the eyrie of this species in many varied situations in Montana; such as trees, on pillars or ledges of rock, and the shoulders or summits of badland buttes. The female begins to lay at any time from the middle of April until the end of the first week in May, according to the season, and deposits two, three or

1 Proceedings of the Boston Society of Natural History, Vol. XVII., June, 1874.

four handsome eggs of variable shade, but usually with rich blotches of umber brown on a creamy or greenish white ground. The eggs are half as large again as those of the Common American Buzzard Buteo swainsoni. The Ferruginous Rough-leg appears to incubate for about twenty-five days, but I have not been able to time her exactly. The young birds are full-fledged and leave the nest when about two months old but do not acquire the full adult plumage for four or five years. Their call for the parents is at first soft and low, (like the piping of young Golden Eagles), but develops into a pleasing whistle by the time they are ready to leave the nest. The hungry fledglings become very excited when they see one of their parents approaching, and have a parrot-like trick of working their heads and necks while snapping their beaks at the same time. If handled, they resent it with their bills as well as their feet, and, in my experience, are the only raptores to use the bill in defending themselves. The Ferruginous Rough-leg is very fond of standing upon one leg, keeping the other concealed among the feathers, and is so depicted by Ridgway in Fisher's 'Hawks and Owls of The United States.' As Dr. Fisher well remarks (op. cit. p. 92, 93), "When this hawk is hunting its flight appears labored and heavy, but when circling in the air its flight is graceful and resembles closely that of the Golden Eagle."

My own endeavors to observe Ferruginous Rough-legs at the nest were to a great extent frustrated by outside interference. In 1899, a pair nested upon the apex of a badland butte near my ranch, and the female was sitting hard upon two eggs during the first week in May. The nest appeared to be in an unfavorable situation, exposed to every wind, was lined with dried grass, and composed of sage brush stalks, creeping cedar, and cedar drift-wood sticks. The latter were the largest sticks I have ever seen used in any nest, not excepting eyries of the Golden Eagle. Unfortunately, a road wound by the nesting site, and the hawk was wantonly killed before she had succeeded in hatching her nestlings. She might easily have escaped when first startled from the nest, but was unwilling to forsake her eggs, and flew screaming in circles above them until she was shot. The victim was a fully adult female, and in life must have been a truly magnificent bird. Her tail was entirely snow-white except for a few small streaks of bright chestnut, and

her legs and 'flags' were of the latter color barred with black. To the casual observer, the color of these parts will mark the chief difference between adult and immature birds. In first and second plumage, at least, the legs and thighs are of such pale buff as to appear white excepting in brilliant sunshine. Moreover, the tail of the young bird has four dark bars and is white for the basal half only, the terminal half being light slate color.

In May, 1905, a second pair of hawks constructed an eyrie in a cotton-wood tree about six miles from my Dawson County ranch. A shepherd who happened to camp with his sheep wagon at this place boiled and ate the three eggs, whereupon the disgusted birds deserted it. Yet a third pair nested upon a ledge of a high butte during 1908, when two eggs were laid, but the almost full-fledged young were discovered by some sheep shearers in July, who killed one and took the other captive. From three nests, therefore, no young birds were reared, and one adult was inexcusably sacrificed.

Last summer, Mr. W. R. Felton, an engineer of the Chicago, Milwaukee and Puget Sound Railway kept four nests of this hawk under observation for me, and visited them whenever his work of building a branch line between Lewiston and Great Falls allowed him time. These four nests were within a radius of four miles from the engineer's headquarters at the Square Butte Ranch, in Chouteau County, and others were reported seven miles away. Besides the above, Mr. Felton found four disused but well preserved eyries, two of them within a quarter of a mile of an occupied nest. All eight nests were placed upon rocky ledges or points. They were constructed of the same materials, which consisted of sage brush and greasewood sticks, with some soapwood intermixed, and lined with dry cow manure. As will be seen from the measurements, the loose pile of sticks made the new nests remarkably high, but they settled considerably before the young had flown. A brief history of the four nests and their occupants condensed from Mr. Felton's notes follows: Nest No. 1, which was only two miles north of the Square Butte Ranch, and easily visible from there through powerful binoculars, was visited almost every day. This particular nest was picturesquely situated on a rocky point of the 'Chalk Cliffs' northeast of the geologically famous "Square Butte,"