384 EcKSTORM, Description of the Adult Black Merlin. \^^ 



of the color pattern of the feathers, suddenly predominating, giving the 

 effect of a brownish black body with buff markings, thickest down the 

 axis, each feather of the middle of the breast being black with a buff edge 

 lateralh' while those toward the sides have the buff restricted to a 

 patch each side of the shaft toward the base. Where the feathers are 

 longest other series of spots appear, sometimes confluent, so that the 

 flank feathers are conspicuously barred twice or thrice with brownish 

 black. The crissum and shorter tail-coverts repeat the pattern of the 

 throat but on a ground of deep buff and with longer, heavier, streaks ; 

 the ochraceous tibise are similarly but more broadly and heavily marked ; 

 the longest under tail-coverts show a handsome pattern of hastate black 

 spots on a pale buff ground, the spot being but the irregular terminal of 

 several heavy bars. From below the tail shows the terminal band more 

 clearly and the lowest of the whitish bands, the only one visible below 

 the coverts, is whiter and more regular than on the upper surface. The 

 wings (too tightly closed in this specimen to admit of minute examination) 

 are notably dark beneath, though browner than on the upper surface, 

 show some white upon the under coverts and have five to seven obsoles- 

 cent whitish bars (rather than spots) on the inner webs of the primaries. 

 near the basal half. 



Legs yellow ; bill horn-blue. Wing, 7.70 ; tail, 5.30 ; tarsus, 1.30 ; bill, 

 .62 ; depth of bill, .40. 



I have not on hand the material to warrant any dogmatic con- 

 ckisions, but comparing this specimen with a limited number of 

 both F. colmnbarius and F. richardsoni one is struck by its evident 

 kinship to the former. Indeed, a large female in high autumnal 

 plumage, taken on the Cranberry Islands, ofT Mount Desert, 

 Maine, is strikingly like this Black Merlin, being very nearly as 

 dark on the back and two thirds as black below ; were it a blue- 

 black instead of a sepia-black it might very well pass for the mate 

 to this male. Between this and richardsoni, however, there is an 

 evident gulf, hardly more noticeable in color than in form. 

 Richardsoni in all the plumages that I have seen shows a distinct 

 mottled nuchal band, while the nuchal stripe of columbarius is 

 much more hidden, a variation of the bases rather than of the 

 extremities of the feathers. In columbarius also the maxillary 

 stripe is stronger and more definite and the black line down the 

 centre of the feathers (in richardsoni never more than a mere 

 shaft-line) is consistently heavier. Columbarius likewise in the 

 younger plumages is more nearly immaculate above and in all 

 shows no spots on the outer webs of the primaries and fewer and 



