386 TAIjCOTflDJB. 



outside blackish brown ; secondaries grey, with blackish cross- 

 bands, beneath all are greyish or whitish with dark bands ; upper 

 tail-coverts white, sometimes with rufous-brown drops or bands ; 

 tail grey, with dark brown cross-bands ; lower parts white, with 

 dark brown shaft-stripes, broad on the throat and breast, narrower 

 and sometimes disappearing on the abdomen. 



Young birds are more uniformly brown above than the adult 

 female, and have no grey on the wings or tail, which are brown 

 with darker bands ; the ruff is ill-marked at the sides, but there is 

 a large white brown-streaked nuchal patch and another patch of 

 buff-edged brown feathers on the throat ; the lower parts generally 

 are rufous-brown, faintly streaked darker. The change from this 

 plumage to that of the adult male appears to take place by moult. 

 Yov a long time it was supposed that both sexes in this bird 

 were pied and similar, but the true facts were gradually traced out 

 by Mr. Hume. Still one undoubted case is recorded by Mr. Cripps 

 in which a female assumed the pied livery of the adult male, and 

 other probable cases are indicated by the measurements of pied 

 specimens. 



Base of bill bluish, remainder black ; cere dusky yellow ; iris 

 bright yellow; legs orange-yellow (Oato). Legs in female pale 

 yellow {Cripps). 



Length of male 17 ; tail 8-5 ; wing 13-75 ; tarsus 3 : length of 

 female 18-5 ; tail 9 ; wing 14*5 ; tarsus 3-2 ; bill from gape 1*2. 



Distribuion. A winter visitor to the Eastern half of the Indian 

 Peninsula and to Burma. Common in Bengal, Cachar, Assam, 

 and Pegu, and along the base of the Himalayas as far west as 

 Oude, also along the eastern coast of the Peninsula and for a 

 considerable distance inland, and in Malabar : but rare in Ceylon, 

 and in the N.W. Provinces of India, and, I believe, unknown in 

 the Bombay Presidency *, the Central Provinces Avest of Jubbul- 

 poor and Nagpur. and in North -western India generally. Beyond 

 Indian limits this species is found throughout a large part of 

 Eastern Asia, China, Japan, Amurland and Mongolia, Philippines, 

 Siam, Cochin China, Malacca, &c. 



Habits, Sec. This is essentially a bird of the plains, and especially 

 of swampy grass and of rice-fields, over which the conspicuous 

 black and white plumage of the male bird makes it a familiar 

 feature of the landscape. Its food consists chiefly of snakes, 

 lizards, frogs, and insects, with birds and mice. Some Pied Harriers 

 breed in Northern India ; Jerdon noticed several in Purneah in 

 July, and Cripps twice in April found an egg laid on an apology 

 for a nest amongst " Ulu " grass (Saccharum cylindricum) close 

 to the Brahmaputra in the Dibrugarh district of Upper Assam. 



* It i9 included in Barnes's ' Birds of Bombay,' but in this, as in several 

 other cases, the author has been misled by Jerdon's statement that the species is 

 found in Central India, bj' which Jerdon understood South-western Bengal or 

 Chutia Nagpur. Jerdon also says that C. melanoleticus is rare in the Deccan, 

 by which he may mean some part of the Hyderabad territory. 



