150 Mr. R. Swinhoe on Birds from Hakodadi. 



XVIII. — On some Birds from Hakodadi, in Northern Japan. 

 By R. SwiNiioE. 



{Plate VII.) 



Mr. Thomas Blakiston, resident in Hakodadi, the port of 

 Yesso, the most northern island of the Japanese group, with 

 the help of a Japanese gentleman, Mr. Fuknsi Goro, in the 

 service of the Japanese Government, has again been collecting 

 the birds of Northern Ja{)an, and has sent me a fine series, 

 which I have carefully studied and compared, and will now 

 enumerate, with remarks. 



With the Japanese birds are included two skins marked as 

 coming from Gheyinsk, at the head of an inlet in the north 

 of the Sea of Ochotsk. Of these one is a fine adult of the 

 Aleutian Islands' Sea Eagle, Haliaetus pelagicus (Pall.), and 

 the other a male Araoorland Capercailzie, Tetrao urogalloides, 

 Midd. Both were probably procured from some Russian ves- 

 sel from the north ; and that is the only way I can account 

 for the Dutch " voyageurs '^ of the ' Fauna Japonica ' find- 

 ing the monster Sea-Eagle at Nagasaki. 



1. Black-eared Kite. Milvus melanotis, T. & S. 



A very rufous male shot in March, and nearly as bright- 

 coloured as the plate of the adult female in the ' Fauna Ja- 

 ponica.' This rufescence is, I presume, accidental — though, 

 out of a large series from various parts of China, from Canton 

 to Pekin, I have not one so coloured. In these the occi- 

 put and axillaries often show reddish feathers; but in the 

 Hakodadi specimen the head and neck, back, axillaries, and 

 breast are all reddish. I was at first disposed to think that 

 we had in this a distinct species, corresponding to the red 

 figure in the ' Fauna Japonica,' which has long been a stimi- 

 bling-block to me ; but I cannot find any distinction of form 

 to warrant such a belief. The other figure in the ^ Fauna 

 Japonica,' that of a male, presents the appearance of the bird 

 that ranges along the China coast. The birds I procured in 

 Hainan are much smaller and darker, with larger bill, and less 

 white on the under quills. These I take to be the typical M. 



