130 ALLEN'S naturalist's LIBRARY. 



blackish; feet yellow; iris yellow. Total length, 18 inches ; 

 culmen, I'l ; wing, i3*5-i5'o; tail, 9*8; tarsus, 2*3. 



Adult Female. — Different from the male. Nearly uniform 

 brown above, with slight remains of rufous margins to the 

 feathers ; head and hind-neck streaked with pale rufous, as well 

 as the sides of the neck and the facial ruff; ear-coverts nearly 

 uniform brown, the feathers under the eye whitish ; quills dark 

 brown, the primary-coverts and primaries shaded with grey ex- 

 ternally, and barred with darker brown, more distinctly under- 

 neath, where the quills are buffy white on the inner web, the 

 inner secondaries being brown like the back ; upper tail-coverts 

 white ; tail brown, tipped with paler brown and crossed with 

 five bands of darker brown, the interspaces paler and more 

 rufescent on the outer rectrices, inclining to whitish on the 

 inner web ; under surface of body buffy white, with rufous 

 centres to the feathers, giving a distinctly striped appearance ; 

 cere dull yellow; bill black; feet yellow; iris hazel. Total 

 length, 19 inches; wing, 15-3 ; tail, 87 ; tarsus, 1*4. 



Young Birds. — Dark brown like the old female, with pale 

 tawny margins to the feathers of the upper surface, the white 

 upper tail-coverts with broad tawny-buff edges and narrow 

 shaft-lines of dark brown ; head and neck rich tawny colour, 

 the feathers centred with dark brown and imparting a mottled 

 appearance ; lores, eyebrow, and fore-part of ear-coverts white, 

 the latter washed with rufous ; tail-feathers deep tawny colour, 

 inclining to buff at the tip, and crossed with four or five black- 

 ish bands, the central feathers uniform ashy-brown with five dis- 

 tinct black bands ; throat whitish ; facial ruff and entire under 

 surface of body clear tawny-buff, with a few streaks of reddish- 

 brown on the upper breast, flanks, and upper wing-coverts. 



Characters. — Montagu's Harrier is a smaller bird than the 

 Hen-Harrier, and the adult male is easily distinguished from 

 the male of the latter by the white thighs, which have also rufous 

 streaks, or spots. The throat and chest are ashy-grey. The adult 

 female is distinguished from that of the Hen-Harrier by the 

 simple test of the presence or absence of a notch in the outer 

 web of the fifth primary. If there is no notch, then the bird 

 is Montagu's Harrier and not the Hen-Harrier. This same 

 test will distinguish the young birds of the two species, and I 



