A. BRITISH BIRDS. 
except the thighs, vent, and under tail-coverts, which are chestnut; cere 
and bare space round the eyes orange-red; irides hazel; bill orange at 
base, dark horn-colour at tip; legs and toes brownish red; claws yellow, 
darkest at tips. The adult female has the general colour of the upper 
parts below the nape, including the tail, slate-grey, not so dark as in the 
male, each feather broadly barred with darker grey. The wings are not 
so silvery a grey as in the male ; their under coverts are chestnut, and the 
quills are broadly barred with white on the inner web. The head, nape, 
and the whole of the underparts are dull chestnut, paler on the throat ; the 
feathers round the eye dark brown. Soft parts as in the adult male, but 
paler ; bill more uniform horn-colour. 
The young male has the general colour of the upper parts except the nape 
slaty brown, each feather broadly margined with pale rufous. The quills 
are dark brown, almost black, narrowly tipped and margined with buflish 
white, and ovally barred with white on the inner webs. The tail is evenly 
barred with rufous, less distinctly so on the two centre feathers. The 
nape and entire underparts are pale buff, the former obscurely and the 
latter broadly streaked with brown, except on the vent, under tail-coverts, 
and thighs, which are uniform buff; the feathers round the eye brownish 
black. Bull and cere horn-colour, paler on the lower mandible. Legs and 
toes paler than in aduit birds. Lastly, the young female resembles the 
young male ; but the stripes on the underparts are broader. 
It will thus be seen that the adult male bird may always be recognized by 
its uniform slate-grey plumage, unbarred and unstreaked ; the young of 
both sexes by the pale margins to the feathers of the upper parts, the barred 
tail and broadly streaked pale underparts; the fully adult female by her 
uniform unspotted chestnut underparts. The young birds in first plumage 
very closely indeed resemble young Hobbies ; but may always be distin- 
guished by the row of conspicuous oblong white spots on the primaries, 
and have the outside web of the outside tail-feather barred as well as the 
inside web. The so-called young male figured in Dresser’s ‘ Birds of 
Europe’ is the not quite adult plumage of the female of the second year, 
which still shows a few streaks on the underparts. Young Red-footed 
Falcons may be distinguished from young Merlins by their thighs, which 
in the latter species are streaked, and by the oblong spots on the pri- 
maries of the former species, which in the latter are represented by pale 
dull chestnut bars. 
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