146 ALLEN'S NATURALIST'S LIBRARY. 



the nest, and off flew the bird like an arrow, taking all the 

 party by surprise. She had been sitting close the whole time, 

 and had disregarded all the talking and noise we had made 

 beneath the tree. After flying round for some time, at a great 

 height in the air, above the nest, she disappeared for half an 

 hour, when she suddenly came gliding through the wood 

 towards her home, and was shot by Captain Shelley. The 

 male was trapped the next morning on the nest, and both birds 

 proved to be in immature plumage. 



Eggs. The eggs of the Sparrow-Hawk vary greatly in their 

 colour and markings, and are sometimes very handsome. The 

 clutch consists of from three to four eggs, on rare occasions 

 five. The ground-colour is a faint greenish-white or else quite 

 white, and sometimes the eggs are entirely unspotted. Others 

 are blotched or even marbled with dark reddish-brown, in 

 which chestnut and lilac are mingled. The distribution of 

 the markings is thoroughly irregular, for sometimes these 

 brown or rufous markings are distributed over the whole egg, 

 and are more or less broken up into small spots or blotches, 

 while in others the rufous markings are gathered at one or 

 other end of the egg, leaving its opposite pole uniformly white, 

 while in certain specimens in the British Museum the mark- 

 ings form a ring round the centre of the egg, leaving the two 

 ends unspotted and not marked in any way. Axis, i'55-i'75 ; 

 diam., 1-25-1-4. 



THE BUZZARDS. SUB-FAMILY BUTEONIN^. 



In all the remaining Birds of Prey we find the legs much 

 shorter than in the Hawks and Harriers, and the proportions 

 of the tibia and tarso-metatarsal bones are different, the 

 former being much longer than the latter, and not equal in 

 length, as it is in the long-legged Hawks. 



The Buzzards may be recognised from the Eagles and Fal- 

 cons, which are the other two groups of these shorter-legged 

 Birds of Prey, by having the hinder aspect of the tarsus scaled, 

 and not reticulated. By this character we know that some 

 of the largest of Raptorial birds, such as the Great Harpy 

 Eagle (Thrasaetus harpyia) of South America, are Buzzards 



