THE ROUGH-LEGGED BUZZARD EAGLE. 115 
accounted for by the nature of the country, this part of Lapland being 
on the borderland between the forest and the tundra. There are no 
cliffs ; but the country is described as a wild tract of undulating ground, 
abounding with forest, river, lake, and swamp. 
The eggs of this bird are subject to considerable variation in colour 
and size, some specimens being poorly marked, whilst others are very 
richly blotched with dark red, or clouded and mottled with pale brown. 
In some eggs the colouring is confined to a few large rich blotches of red; 
others are evenly spotted with colour, just as intense, over the entire 
surface. A more rare variety is delicately streaked and pencilled with a 
few irregular dashes of pale brown, something similar to a Kite’s. Other 
varieties are seen in which all the colouring is distributed in pale purplish 
shell-markings, with, perhaps, a few streaks of rich brown. The hand- 
somest type of egg is the clouded variety. They vary from 2°25 to 2-1 
inch in length, and from 1:8 to 1°65 inch in breadth. 
The general colour of an adult bird is buffish white, variegated with 
several shades of brown, most closely on the back and rump. ‘The quills 
have the basal half white, terminal half blackish brown ; a broad patch of 
brown on the belly; basal two thirds of tail white, remainder brown, 
narrowly tipped with buffish white. Legs feathered to the toes, fawn- 
colour, streaked with brown. Bill blackish horn, bluish at the base; 
irides brown; feet and cere yellow; claws black. The sexes only differ in 
size, the female being slightly the largest. Immature birds may always 
be distinguished from adults by having the brown markings on the lower 
parts longitudinal instead of transverse. 
