172 FALCONIFORMES CHAP. 
marshes, or poised aloft with its broad expanded tail alone ‘in 
motion, a “ creaking” or “neighing” alarm-note being apparently 
the only cry. Twenty or thirty nests are commonly built close 
together, and are slight platforms of twigs or plant-stems, with 
a lining of aquatic herbage, supported on the reeds or bushes a 
few feet above the water. The two or three eggs are whitish 
with reddish- or yellowish-brown and grey blotches. The breeding- 
quarters are constantly changed. 
Machaerorhamphus alcinus, of Tenasserim, Malacca, Borneo, 
Sumatra, and New Guinea, is especially remarkable for the wide 
gape of the short bill, which recalls that of the Caprimulgidae. All 
the tail-coverts are unusually elongated, a fine crest of pointed 
feathers adorns the occiput, and the plumage is black with a 
chocolate tinge, the throat and middle of the chest being white, with 
a broad black streak down the former. JZ anderssoni, of Damara- 
Land, the Cameroons, and Madagascar, known to have crepuscular 
tendencies and to feed partly on bats, is smaller, and has a white 
abdomen; JZ. revoili, of Somali-Land, is intermediate. 
Pernis apivorus, the Honey-Buzzard, which still breeds occasion- 
ally in Britain in June, when the dense foliage easily causes it 
to be overlooked, inhabits Europe generally, and probably extends 
to Japan, migrating in winter to Madagascar and South Africa. 
The extremely complex phases of plumage make it uncertain 
whether it shares the Indian Region with the similar but crested 
P. ptilorhynchus (cristatus), from which P. tweeddalii, of Sumatra, 
is doubtfully separable. The upper parts are brown, with greyish 
head and three or four dark bands on the tail, the lower white 
with brown spots and bars. White mottlings usually shew above, 
and the female has the crown brown. The shortly-feathered 
lores distinguish Pernis from Buteo. Our woodland species feeds 
upon the ground, and devours bees, wasps, and grubs—though 
not honey—from the comb, together with small mammals, birds, 
slugs, and worms; the ery is shrill, but seldom heard; the nest, 
composed of sticks lined with leaves, contains two or three whitish 
eggs with rich purplish-red or brown markings. P. celebensis 
differs in the rufous chest, which exhibits black streaks, that are 
continued to the white throat with its black longitudinal band ; the 
adult closely resembles Limnaétus lanceolatus, both being peculiar 
to Celebes. Henicopernis longicaudatus, of Papuasia, is brown 
barred with black above, and white streaked with blackish below, 
