102 BRITISH BIRDS 



The Marsh Harrier. 



This bird is also called Moor Buzzard, Puttock, Duck 

 Hawk, and White-headed Harpy, which last was surely a 

 stretch of imagination on the part of the inventor, for the 

 bird has a light fawn-coloured head thickly marked with 

 narrow black lines; the back is dark brown; the tail and 

 wing-coverts, light lavender blue ; the breast, grey-white ; the 

 abdomen and thigh feathers, dark fawn, marked with black 

 lines. But the birds vary considerably in appearance. The 

 Marsh Harrier is rather larger than the Hen-Harrier, weigh- 

 ing about 21 ounces and measuring from 19 to 21 inches 

 in length. The female is considerably larger than her mate, 

 from which she does not greatly differ in appearance. The 

 young until after the first moult are brown, and have the 

 cere, which is yellow in the adult, of a greenish colour. 



The nest is usually placed among reeds or bulrushes 

 at the margin of a pond or lake, but occasionally among 

 furze, or on the branches of a tree overhanging the water. 

 The eggs are four or five in number, and are white as 

 a rule, though sometimes they present a bluish tinge. 



The food of the Marsh Harrier consists of small animals 

 and birds, whether captured alive or found dead, eggs, 

 fish and even large insects. It is said to attack Gulls and 

 other sea-birds on their return to their nests from their 

 fishing haunts, and to force them to disgorge their prey, 

 which it catches adroitly before the latter reaches the ground. 



Montagu's Harrier. 



This is a conspicuously handsome Hawk, of lamentably 

 rare occurrence now, and readily distinguishable from the 

 Marsh Harrier by a narrow white gorget that reaches nearly 

 to the back of the neck. The bill is dark bluish-grey, but 

 the cere is yellow, as are also the long shanks and the feet. 

 The general colour is slate-blue, with dark centres to the 

 feathers, but the flights are brown, and the belly and vent 

 greyish-white with reddish-brown marks; the outer tail 

 feathers are white with broad fawn-coloured spots, and the 

 central pairs blue with very narrow dark edgings. The 

 iris is yellow, 



