108 GOSHAWK. 
reddish white, or light brown streaked with dark brown. 
Nape, light reddish brown, with an oblong dusky mark on 
the centre of each feather; throat, white or cream white, 
speckled with brown; breast, reddish or yellowish white, 
streaked longitudinally with brown on the centres of the 
feathers, the shafts still darker, narrowing towards the tip of 
each, until after the second moult: when the transverse bars 
appear, they are at first fewer in number and larger than in 
after years; back, reddish or yellowish brown, the feathers 
edged with a paler shade, or yellowish white; primaries, 
dusky, with dark brown, and tipped with whitish; secondaries 
and tertiaries, dusky, with greyish brown bars; greater and 
lesser under wing coverts, light brown, or rufous white, 
streaked as the feathers on the breast; tail, greyish brown, 
with four or five bars of blackish brown alternating with the 
former colour, and tipped with white; underneath, greyish 
white, barred with five bars of greyish brown; tail coverts as 
the back; under tail coverts as the breast, but only marked 
with brown at the tips. Legs and toes, dull yellow, inclining 
to green at the joints: the feathers on the legs are light 
brown or rufous white, streaked, but only on the shafts, as 
the feathers on the breast; claws, brownish black, those of 
the inner toes larger than those of the outer. 
The young female is lighter coloured than the young male, 
and the dark markings on the breast are larger. It is some 
years before the fine grey of the back and the bluish white 
of the breast are assumed. 
White varieties of this species have been sometimes met 
with, and some of a tawny colour with a few brown markings. 
‘I have compared,’ says Macgillivray, ‘British and French 
with American specimens, both in the adult and young states, 
and am perfectly persuaded that no real difference exists 
between them. Were we to form specific distinctions upon 
such trifling discrepancies as are exhibited by the Goshawk 
of America and that of Europe, we might find that our 
common ptarmigan, our bullfinch, wheatear, and kestrel, are 
each of two or three species. Cuvier, in my opinion, very 
strangely refers to the ‘Falco atricapillus’ of Wilson, which 
is the American Goshawk, as a species of ‘Hierofalco,’ that 
is, as intimately allied to the Jer-Falcon. The only name 
by which this species is known in Britain, is that prefixed 
to this article, but variously written—Goshawk, Goss-hawk, 
or Gos-hawk, and apparently a corruption of Goose Hawk.’ 
