ARCHIBUTEO.—BUTEO. 55 
but if is apparently not uncommon in winter in Texas, on the north side of the Rio 
Grande. That it occurs in Northern and Central Mexico can hardly be doubted ; but 
our evidence that it does so rests partly on three specimens in the British Museum 
which have been in the collection for many years, and partly on the statement of 
Mr. Ridgway that the bird occurs in Mexico, though we have no precise information 
on the subject. Capt. Bendire °, however, speaks of it as ‘‘ wintering abundantly in 
Western Texas, many passing south into Mexico.” 
The species breeds from the Plains of the Saskatchewan south to Utah, Colorado, 
and Kansas. It is a fine and handsome bird, building a large nest of sticks, lined with 
turf, in a tree or, in sparsely-wooded districts, on the ground. In some instances, where 
sticks are difficult to procure, the bird has been known to utilize the bones from a 
buffalo’s skeleton for the construction of its nest. The eggs are three or four in 
number, and are somewhat richly mottled with rufous markings. 
BUTEO. 
Buteo, Cuvier, Lec. Anat. Comp. i. tab. (1800), et auctt.; Sharpe, Cat. Birds Brit. Mus. 1. p. 164. 
Tachytriorchis, Kaup, Classif. Saug. u. Vog. p. 123; Sharpe, Cat. Birds Brit. Mus. i. p. 161. 
Buteola, Bonaparte, Compt. Rend. xh. p. 651; Sharpe, Cat. Birds Brit. Mus. i. p. 201. 
Antenor, Ridgway (nec Montf.) in Baird, Brewer, & Ridgw. Hist. N. Amer. Birds, iii. p. 248. 
Parabuteo, Ridgway, t. c. p. 248, note. 
Erythrocnema, Sharpe, Cat. Birds Brit. Mus. i. p. 84. 
The genus Buteo extends throughout a large portion of the world, some thirty species 
being distributed over Europe, Asia, Africa, and Madagascar, as well as North and 
South America. Some dozen species occur within our limits, of which B. albicaudatus, 
B. zonocercus, B. brachyurus, and B. albifrons belong to South-American rather than 
to Northern forms, the others being of Northern type and visiting Mexico and Central 
America only in the winter season. 
Dr. Sharpe divides the genus Buteo, as here understood, into four genera, viz. 
Erythrocnema, Tachytriorchis, Buteo, anu Buteola. Tachytriorchis has a rather shorter 
tail than the others, but does not materially differ; Buteola, in his arrangement, is 
placed in the same section as Archibuteo, and is said to differ from true Buteo by the 
presence of a tubercle in the nasal opening. We have failed to find this character, 
the nostrils of Buteola being just like those of Buteo. Lastly, Buteo harrisi, which 
Dr. Sharpe places in his subfamily Accipitrine, is considered by Dr. Coues a subgenus 
of Buteo, which we think its more appropriate place. 
Dr. Coues’s divisions of the genus seem fairly natural, and are based mainly on 
the number of primaries which are emarginate on the inner webs. ‘They are as 
follows :— 
