FALCO.—TINNUNCULUS. 121 
F, columbario similis, sed ubique pallidior; margaritaceo-griseus ; fronte, supercilio et facie laterali albis, anguste 
nigro striolatis : subtus ochrascens, haud rufo tinctus, et plumis medialiter brunneo striatis. Long. tota 
circa 11°5, ale 7-9, caude 4:55, culm. 0°65, tarsi 1:5. (Descr. maris ex Hermosillo, Sonora. Mus. 
nostr. ) 
2. F. columbarti 2 similis, sed ubique pallidior. Long. tota circa 12:0, ale 88. (Descr. femine ex 
Colorado. Maus. Brit.) 
Hab. Norra America, interior and western Plains from the Mississippi Valley to the 
Pacific coast, and from Texas and Arizona north to the Saskatchewan 7.—MExico, 
Hermosillo in Sonora (Ferrari-Perez). 
This pale and apparently well-marked form of Merlin has been correctly surmised 
by American ornithologists as likely to occur in Mexico. We possess a fine adult 
male specimen procured by Sefior Ferrari-Perez at Hermosillo, in Sonora, on the 
21st of November, 1887; this is the only example hitherto recorded from Central 
America. 
TINNUNCULUS. 
Tinnunculus, Vieillot, Ois. Am. Sept. i. p. 89 (1807), et auctt. 
Cerchneis, Boie, Isis, 1826, p. 970; Sharpe, Cat. Birds Brit. Mus. i. p. 423. 
The genus Tinnunculus includes a number of small species which differ from the 
true Falcons in the proportion of their toes, the outer and inner ones being nearly 
equal in length and considerably shorter than the middle toe. There is but little 
difference in the size of the sexes, a distinguishing mark in the Falconide, where 
the female is usually by far the larger bird. In the majority of the Kestrels the sexes 
differ in colour, the male being handsomer than the female; this is certainly the case 
with American forms, but in some of the Old World members of the genus they are 
alike in colour and size, and in the African species, 7. rupicoloides and T. fieldi, the 
plumage is identical. Admitting 7. sparverius as the type of the American Kestrels, 
it must be allowed that several races existing in the Neotropical region are worthy of 
definition ; but the characters insisted upon by Dr. Bowdler Sharpe, in his ‘ Catalogue 
of Birds,’ and by other modern writers, must, in our opinion, now be revised, too much 
stress having been laid on the presence or absence of a rufous patch on the head and 
also on the amount of spotting of the underparts. In the North-American 7’. sparverius, 
which is the only species occurring within our limits, and which can be separated 
from its South-American representatives, the rufous patch on the crown is frequently 
absent. 
1. Tinnunculus sparverius. 
The Little Hawk, Catesby, Nat. Hist. Carol. i. p. 5, t. 5°. 
Falco sparverius, Linn. Syst. Nat.i. p. 128°; Licht. Preis-Verz. Mex. Vég. p. 3°; Cab. J. f. Orn. 
1863, p. 58*; Wagler, Isis, 1831, p. 517°; Ferrari-Perez, Pr. U.S. Nat. Mus. ix. p. 168°; 
Zeledon, An. Mus. Nac. Costa Rica, 1887, p. 1257; Herrera, La Nat. (2) i. pp. 176°, 320° ; 
BIOL. CENTR.-AMER., Aves, Vol. III., February 1901. 16 
