THE KITES, BUZZARDS AND HARRIERS. 1 9 



the unlucky young lark or incautious quail. If it 

 alights, it alights on the ground, but the sole of 

 this bird's foot does not seem to require much rest. 

 Long-winged and light-bodied, it skims along the 

 grass and skirts the bush, dips to the hollow and rises 

 to the mound, as if it knew some charm to cancel the 

 laws of gravitation. The sexes of the common 

 Harrier are so unlike that no one who did not know 

 would suspect their relationship. The male is like a 

 Gull even in colour, pale blue-grey on all the upper 

 parts and white underneath. The female is a dark, 

 umber-brown bird, mottled with reddish, the under 

 parts being spotted or dashed with reddish on a white 

 or pale ground. The lady is larger than her lord, as 

 is the fashion among hawks. I am referring to the 

 Common or Pale Harrier (Circus macrurus ). 

 Montague's Harrier (Circus cineraceiis ) is very like 

 it in both sexes on a passing view, and either species 

 may be seen occasionally in Bombay, for they are 

 very common all over India in the cold season. 

 They arrive about October and depart in March or 

 April to colder regions, where they will lay their eggs 

 and bring up their young on the ground, strange 

 hawks that they are. 



These birds have a relation called the Marsh 

 Harrier (Circus ceruginosus), which leaves the dry 

 land to them and devotes its energies to swamps, 

 tanks and all shallow waters ; a bird well cursed of 

 sportsmen, for though its chief business is with 

 frogs, it never refuses a wounded snipe or duck. 

 What is almost more irritating is that, as it advances, 

 slow-flapping, over rice-field or rushy marsh, every 

 snipe takes wing. In the air they have no reason to 



