HEN HARRIER. Ill 



I may add, that several species of true Harriers are now 

 known to exist on each of the large continents of the Old 

 and New World. 



The male and female, it has already been stated, are 

 when adult so very different in colour as to have led for- 

 merly to the belief that they were distinct species ; and 

 we are indebted to Colonel Montagu for a series of obser- 

 vations detailed in the ninth volume of the Transactions of 

 the Linnean Society, and afterwards in the Supplement to 

 his Ornithological Dictionary, which, corroborated by the 

 more recent observations of others, have clearly determined 

 that the Hen Harrier and Ringtail are but the adult male 

 and female of the same species. 



The whole length of the male is about eighteen inches ; 

 the bill black, or bluish black ; the cere and irides yel- 

 low ; the black hairs on the lore, or space between the 

 base of the beak and the eye, radiate from a centre, those 

 in a direction upward and forward meet and become mixed 

 with those of the opposite side over the ridge of the cere, 

 hiding the nostrils; the whole of the head, neck, back, 

 wing-coverts, wings, and upper surface of the tail-feathers, 

 ash grey ; with the exception in my own specimen of a 

 mottled brown spot on the nape of the neck, the last re- 

 maining portion of its former brown plumage ; the wing- 

 primaries nearly black, the first the shortest and the lightest 

 in colour, the longest not reaching to the end of the tail ; 

 the chin and throat ash grey, like the other parts of the 

 neck ; the breast and belly lighter in colour, becoming 

 bluish white ; thighs and under tail-coverts white ; under 

 surface of the tail-feathers pale greyish white, with traces 

 of five darker bars ; the legs and toes slender and yellow ; 

 the claws black. 



Young males are brown, like the female to be next de- 

 scribed, but begin to change from the brown colour to the 



