BUTEONIN^. 99 



This handsome Harrier is less generally spread over India than 

 the two last species, but is found in abundance in many districts, 

 especially where rice cultivation is carried on, as on the Malabar 

 Coast, in parts of the Carnatic, and in Mysore. It is rare in the 

 Deccan and Central India, but common in Bengal. Capt. Irby 

 remarks that this species is never met with far away from grass 

 jungles, where it appears to replace the preceding species. This 

 is quite contrary to my observations of it in Southern India. 

 Like all the others, this Harrier is migratory, and probably breeds 

 like the rest, in Central Asia, but it is not enumerated by Pallas in 

 his Zoology of Eussian Asia. 



Marsh Harriers. 



Circus of Bonaparte. This is a stouter and more robust form, 

 and has both bill and legs also proportionally stouter. 



54. Circus .ffiruginosus, Lm. 



Falco, apud Linn^us — Blyth, Cat. 88 — Horsf., Cat. 33 — 

 F. rufus, Gmel. — Jerdon, Cat. 25 — C. variegatus, — Sykes, Cat. 

 16— C. Sykesii, Lesson — Gould, Birds of Europe, pi. o2—Kutar 

 and Kulesir H. — Mat-chil, Beng., i. e. Meadow Kite — Sufeid sira, 

 {i. e. white headed,) and Tika Bauri, of Mussulmans in Bengal. 

 The Marsh Harrier. 



Descr. — The young bird is uniform dark reddish umber broAvn. 

 In a further stage the head and throat are yellowish, or rufous 

 white, with dark stripes on the crown. In some the head is pure 

 white, and tlie upper tail coverts and base of the outer tail feathers 

 are pale reddish. 



In the fully adult the head, neck, and breast are pale rufous, with 

 dark brown stripes, deepening to dark red brown on the belly and 

 thigh coverts ; upper tail coverts marked with red, white, and brown ; 

 the shoulders, secondaries, and tail, pure silvery grey ; back, 

 scapulars and tertiaries, deep brown ; primaries black. The bird 

 in this state of plumage does not appear, as I learn from j\Ir. Blyth, 

 to have been killed in Europe, and the figures in Yarrell and Gould 

 were taken from Indian specimens. This constitutes the Asiatic 

 Marsh Harrier as a very remarkable race, at all events. 



