THE BESRA SPARROW-HAWK. 183 



narrower bands ; chin and throat pale rufous, with a brown gular stripe ; 

 sides of the head mixed brown and rufous ; sides of the neck deep ferru- 

 ginous mottled with brown ; remainder of lower plumage rather bright 

 ferruginous, paler on the abdomen and under tail-coverts ; the breast with 

 broad brown streaks ; the abdomen and sides of the body with roundish 

 rufous-brown spots, showing a tendency in places to become bars ; under 

 tail-coverts with large triangular brown patches ; under wing-coverts and 

 axillaries ferruginous spotted with brown. 



Legs and feet pale yellowish green ; bill plumbeous blue, tipped blackish ; 

 irides and cere gamboge-yellow. (Hume.) 



Length about 12 inches, tail 5'6, wing 6'6, tarsus 2'1, bill from gape '8. 

 The female is rather larger, the wing reaching the length of 7' 5. 



I have drawn up my descriptions from the oldest and youngest birds 

 that I was able to find in Mr. Seebohm's collection. The variations of 

 plumage are, of course, immense, but they will be found, I think, to range 

 between the two extremes above described. 



I procured an undoubted specimen of the Besra Sparrow- Hawk on the 

 Pegu hills a few miles above the town of Pegu. Capt. Feilden obtained a 

 Sparrow- Hawk of this section which has given rise to much doubt Mr. 

 Sharpe, according to Lord Tweeddale, having identified it with A. stevensoni, 

 and Mr. Gurney, on the other hand, and according to the same authority, 

 having identified it with the Celebean species A. rhodogaster. It is useless 

 to speculate now on what the bird really was ; but I notice that Mr. Gurney 

 records a specimen of the true A. virgatus from Thayetmyo as being in the 

 Norwich Museum. Mr. Blyth gives A. virgatus from Arrakan and Tenas- 

 serim, but I do not know on what authority. It appears to be a rare 

 species, as Mr. Davison procured only one specimen in the latter Division 

 at the town of Thatone. 



Two closely allied races, A. gularis and A. stevensoni, occur, the first in 

 the Himalayas, Japan and China, and the second in China and the Malay 

 peninsula. The distinctions between the three races are too minute to be 

 entered upon in this work. 



So long as the three races of this Sparrow-Hawk remain so difficult to 

 distinguish, it is not easy to trace the exact distribution of A. virgatus. It 

 appears, however, to be spread over India, Ceylon, the Andamans, the 

 Indo-Burmese countries, portions of China, the Malay peninsula and the 

 islands of the Malay archipelago. 



Mr. Parker found the nest of this bird in Ceylon in June, a small 

 structure made of sticks, placed in a tree, and containing one young bird. 



