Notes on Mr. R, B. Sharpens Catalogue 0/ Accipitres. 71 



IV. — Notes on a 'Catalogue of the Accipitres in the British 

 Museum,' by R. Bowdler Sharpe (1874). By J. H. 



GURNEY. 



[Continued from ' The Ibis/ 1878, p. 466.] 



It is a remarkable circumstance that the genus Milvus, though 

 so very widely distributed^ and, as regards some of its species, 

 so numerically abundant in the Old World, is wholly absent 

 from the American continent. 



In referring in the first instance to the typical species of 

 the genus, M. ictinus, I may mention that an article on this 

 Kite, published subsequently to Mr. Sharpens volume, in 

 Mr. Dresser^s ' Birds of Europe,' contains a detailed account 

 of its geographical distribution, including its range in Western 

 Asia and North-western Africa, as well as its occurrence in 

 Madeira and in the Canary and Cape-Verd Islands, none 

 of which localities are quoted for it by Mr. Sharpe. Mr. 

 Dresser also figures and describes the immature plumage of 

 this species, which is not referred to by Mr. Sharpe. The 

 female of M. ictinus is described by Mr. Dresser as differing 

 from the male in coloration by " the head being slightly 

 washed with rufous, the tail lighter, and in general the colours 

 rather paler ;" but I believe that these peculiarities disappear 

 with age, as none of them exist in a Welsh female which I 

 had in confinement, and which, after laying two eggs, died 

 in its 28th year, and is now preserved in my collection*. 



The three species which in Mr. Sharpens Catalogue imme- 

 diately follow Milvus ictinus, viz. M. agyptius, M. migrans 



* Mr. E. T. Booth, in an interesting note on this species, published in 

 the ' Field ' of 12th October 1878, expresses his opinion that the female 

 bird has the tail not so much forked as the male. I have not access to a 

 sufficient series of dissected specimens to enable me to test the accm-acy 

 of Mr. Booth's view on this point ; but it is one well worthy of attention, 

 especially as a similar distinction between the sexes has been observed in 

 Turkestan in the case of the Asiatic M. melanotis (vide ' Stray Feathers ' 

 for 1870, p. 127). 



Mr. Booth also describes the colour of the ii'is in the young of M. 

 ictinus, after first acquiring its nestling-plumage, as a " dirty lavender ; '' 

 by Macgillivray it is described as " yellowish brown " (see his work on 

 ' British Birds,' vol. iii. p. 27o). 



