^°'i9<^^''^] EcKSTOR.M, Description of the Adult Black Merlin. 383 



Not a word here to indicate that this Linkville was sixty miles 

 away, and that he had ridden there in disagreeable weather over 

 roads sure to have been bad to make certain that his gift was 

 safely started, nor that the box contained the bulk of his acquisi- 

 tions in six months, nor that he contemplated adding this Merlin, 

 the rarest of his recent captures, to a gift already so bountiful as 

 almost to dismay the recipient, who was merely a friend-by-letter. 

 But that was like the Captain. 



Falco coliimbarius siickleyi (Ridgw.), 1^ adult, (collection of Manly 

 Hardy, Brewer, Maine, taken by Capt. Chas. E. Bendire, U. S. A., Maj' 9, 

 1SS3. "thirty miles south of Fort Klamath, Oregon, en route to Linkville, 

 in pine timber "). 



Entire upper parts black, with tlie gloss of high plumage but without 

 particular iridescence, shaded as follows : head and neck dull black, 

 bend of wing and lesser coverts metallic black, remiges warm brownish 

 black, rectrices dead black, tertials, lower scapulars, middle and greater 

 coverts, rump and upper tail-coverts a clear steel-blue black, bluest on tail- 

 coverts, most ashy on tertials, forming a continuous but restricted mantle, 

 every feather of which shows a heavy black shaft; crown (in high lights 

 onlv) with a tinge of ashy sufficient to demark a definite crown patch, in 

 other lights nearly concolor with the neck and upper back but showing 

 on every feather a central black stripe which minute examination shows 

 to persist even on the neck where the black is intense enough to all but 

 efface it. A nuchal collar, interrupted and indistinct, formed hy bufty- 

 whiie spots at the bases of the neck feathers, visible where the feathers 

 do not perfectly overlap. Primaries and secondaries narrowly outlined 

 on tips and back edges by a line of huffy brown, the outer webs immacu- 

 late, the inner webs showing, though slightly, the sparse light bars of the 

 under side. Tail with a mere trace of white terminal line and four nar- 

 row, obsolescent bluish ash bands, the outermost (lying 2.20 in. from 

 tip) so interrupted as to be incomplete on every pair of rectrices, and 

 restricted on the four outer pairs to a V-shaped mark at the centre of the 

 vane ; the next band, the last visible below the coverts, whiter, wider 

 and more continuous. Forehead narrowly whitish ; a narrow but distinct 

 white superciliary line; sides of head and neck and the throat well down 

 to the point of the breast, white, every feather sti-eaked with black of 

 varj-ing amount and intensity, the black predominating on the lores and 

 maxillary spaces, where it forms a rather indefinite maxillary stripe, and 

 the white being in excess on the throat where it is pure in color and nar- 

 rowly but decidedly striped, every feather of the middle of the throat 

 showing a black shaft-line and a tiny fan-shaped spot at the tip, and those 

 along the edges of the area being uniformly and rather heavily striped. 

 Breast with the white ground turning to butf and the black, bv a chang-e 



