238 Mr. Blyth's Commentary 



with T. alaudarius, and Athene castanotus of Ceylon with A. 

 radiatus. 



15. LlTHOFALCO ^SALON. 



"Peking, Amoy, and Foochow^' (Swinhoe, P. Z. S. 1863, 

 p. 260). In ' Ibis/ 1864, p. 418, Mr. Swinhoe records having 

 noticed a pair of Merhns at sea, on the voyage from Bombay to 

 Galle ! (Were these satisfactorily identified ?) Capt. T. Hutton 

 remarks that the Merlin occurs at Kandahar (Journ. As. Soc. B. 

 xvi. p. 775). 



17. TiNNUNCULUS ALAUDARIUS. 



There is a Tenasserim (Siamese province) Kestrel to which 

 attention should be directed — T. saturatus, Blyth (J. A, S. B. 

 xxviii. p. 277). An adult female received from Ye is noticed in 

 my 'Catalogue' of the Birds in the Calcutta Museum (No. 69) 

 as " perhaps the female of a distinct race, remarkable for the 

 great development of the black markings of its plumage.^' A 

 young female of the same race was subsequently obtained, in 

 which the cap is fuscous, with scarcely an indication of rufous 

 margining the feathers, the fuscous colour also predominating over 

 the rufous upon the whole upper plumage ; and on the tail the 

 rufous hands are narrower than the black bands. An adult male 

 Kestrel, from the vicinity of Moulmein (though rather deeper- 

 coloured than usual), differed in no respect from the common T. 

 alaudarius; but it might well have been a stray individual of the 

 latter, which is common in the adjacent Peguan province of the 

 Indo-Chinese subregion ; or perhaps, though less probably, the 

 adult male of T. saturatus may prove to be less strongly distin- 

 guished, as is indeed exemplified by T.japonicus (Faun. Japon. 

 tab 1 & 1 6). T. saturatus is quite distinct from T. moluccensis 

 (Hombr. et Jacq. 'Voyage au Pole Sud,' Ois., tab. 1 & 2). 



19. Erythropus vespertinus"^. 



The rufous plumage of the adult female of this species was 

 unknown to Dr. Jerdon. In the ' Annals of Natural History ' for 



* [It would be very desirable to ascertain whether examples of the so- 

 called U. vespertinus from India are to be referred to the Avestern form of 

 Red-footed Falcon or to the eastern, with the light-coloured under surface 

 tQ the wings, -B. amnrensis. Vide stiprii, p. 1 1*.'. — Kd.] 



