268 BULLETIN 5 0, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



portion of the feathers white; lesser and middle wing coverts nearly 

 uniform dusky brown, with a faint purplish gloss; greater coverts 

 grayish brown, transversal}^ spotted, or irregularly barred with dusky, 

 the concealed basal portion white; secondaries similar, but darker 

 terminally, and narrowly tipped with white; primaries grayish brown, 

 darker toward ends, indistinctly mottled with darker or lighter, the 

 shorter quills with decidedly, though not abruptly, paler tips; upper 

 tail coverts white, marked with an irregular subtcrminal blotch of 

 dusky brown (continued, irregularly, along the shaft), the inner webs 

 of some of them stained with ochraceous; tail white, the outer webs 

 of all the feathers confusedly mottled, chiefly near the edges, with 

 brownish gray, these mottlings more coalesced, and also darker in 

 color, near the end of the feathers, so as to suggest a poorly defined 

 subterminal darker band; inner webs of all the rectrices, also the 

 shafts, entirel}'' white; head, neck, and entire lower parts white, the 

 first finely streaked laterally with dusky, the throat more broadly 

 streaked, and from the rictus backward a broad stripe of duskj^, 

 formed of coalesced guttate streaks or spots, which at the lower part 

 of the throat extend across, forming a narrow interrupted band; 

 sides of jugulum marked with guttate spots of dusky brown; flanks 

 and lower part of abdomen marked with guttate and lanceolate spots 

 or streaks of very dark brown; front and inner sides of tibiae sparsely 

 and irregularly marked with clear grayish brown; whole breast, anal 

 region, and crissum, immaculate; lining of wing white, sparsely and 

 irregularly spotted with dusky, thus forming a patch on the anterior 

 under wing coverts; under surface of primaries, anterior to their 

 emargination, faintly, sparsely, and irregularly mottled with grayish; 

 iris brown; cere yellowish green; bill blackish at tip, bluish at base; 

 tarsi and toes yellowish gray. 



In this plumage we find great variation in the amount of dark 

 markings on the underparts, ranging from immaculate white to 

 practically the condition described as the intermediate phase. A 

 specimen in the light phase, but with plain light hoary gray outer 

 webs to the primaries, was described as Buteo cooperi. This color 

 feature is unusual; only one such is known. 



Juvenal. — Melanistic phase (sexes alike) : Indistinguishable with 

 any certainty from that of the melanistic phase of Buteo jamaicensis 

 calurus. According to some authors the young of harlani are more 

 abundantly spotted with white than calurus, but there is no positive 

 evidence that birds so separated are definitely attributable to one or 

 the other form. Iris yellowish gray to gray brown; cere and gape 

 greenish; bill bluish slate; tarsi and toes pale greenish or yellowish 

 gray to greenish yellow. 



Juvenal. — Light phase (sexes alike): Indistinguishable with 



