UAPTORES. 31 



tip ; cere, base of tlie upper mandible, legs, and feet yellow ; 

 claws black. 



The sexes exhibit the usual difference in size, the female 

 being much the largest. The plumage of the young differs 

 from that of the adult in being more rusty and the markings 

 less defined, in the feathers of the wings and tail being mar- 

 gined with rufous, and in the whole of the under surface being 

 washed more deeply with rufous than the adult. 



Genus HIERACIDEA. 



Sp. 11. HIERACIDEA BERIGORA. 



Brown Hawk. 



Falco Berigora, Vig. and Horsf. in Linn. Trans., vol. xv. p. 184. 

 leracidea Berigora, Gould, Syn. Birds of Austraha, part iii. 

 Berigora, Aborigines of New South Wales. 

 Qrange-speckled Hawk of the Colonists. 

 Brown Hawk, Colonists of Tasmania. 



leracidea Berigora, Gould, Birds of Australia, foL, vol. i. pi. 11. 



This species is universally distributed over New South 

 Wales and Tasmania, and is represented in Western and North- 

 western Australia by a nearly allied species, to which I have 

 given the name of H. occidentalis. In its disposition it is neither 

 so bold nor so daring as the typical Ealcons, but resembles in 

 many of its habits and actions the Kestrels. Although it some- 

 times captures and preys upon birds and small quadrupeds, 

 its principal food consists of carrion, reptiles, and insects : the 

 crops of several that I dissected were literally crammed with 

 the latter kind of food. It is generally met with in pairs ; but 

 at those seasons when hordes of caterpillars infest the newly 

 sprung herbage it congregates in flocks of many hundreds — a 

 fact I myseff witnessed during the spring of 1840, when the 

 downs near Yarrundi, on the Upper Hunter, were infested in 



