BUTEO. 391 



extending up the first primaries to the notch on the inner web, 

 basal portion of quills white, the primaries silvery grey on the 

 outer web externally, and the secondaries mottled and barred with 

 brown ; tail pale rufous, bases of feathers, especially near the 

 shafts, white, the rufous, especially on the outer web, sometimes 

 passing into grey ; traces of a broad penultimate dark band often 

 occur, and frequently several other bands are more or less distinct ; 

 throat and breast white or buff, with dark shaft-stripes ; abdomen 

 usually brown or rufous-brown, more or less mixed with white, 

 not unfrequently white with dark elongate spots in the middle ; 

 flanks and thigh -co verts brown or rufous-brown, the latter 

 occasionally edged or banded with rufous or buff. Sometimes the 

 lower parts are almost entirely white. 



In the dark plumage the general coloration is brown, the head, 

 neck, and breast generally rendered paler or more rufous by the 

 margins of the feathers, which, however, are not so broad as in the 

 pale birds ; occasionally the head and neck are whitish with dark 

 shafts ; the quills as in the pale form, except that the white bases 

 to the quills are often mottled with brown ; tail, with rare excep- 

 tions, barred throughout or towards the end, the bars dark brown, 

 the interspaces pale brown, grey or rufous, the last or subterminal 

 bar generally, but not always, much broader than the others, and 

 the other dark bars sometimes as broad as the interspaces, some- 

 times much narrower, occasionally broken and irregular. 



The dark phase passes into a uniformly dark chocolate-brown 

 or even blackish-brown bird (B. fuliyinosus}, with only the bases to 

 the primaries white, and pale or sometimes whitish bars on the tail. 



All these plumages vary and pass into each other. There is no 

 distinctively young plumage. Sharpe (I. c.) and Hume (S. P. iv, 

 p. 363) describe the pale form as young, the dark form as older, 

 the blackish-brown bird as very old. The last, however, is cer- 

 tainly not necessarily aged, for Wardlaw Ramsay obtained a 

 nestling covered everywhere with very dark feathers not fully 

 grown, there are no rufous edges, and the tail is barred ; whilst 

 Dresser in the 'Birds of Europe' describes another nestling dark 

 rufous and brown with a barred tail. He also records a moulting 

 bird with a worn banded tail, and one new feather pale creamy 

 rufous and unhanded. Ghirney (Ibis, 1876, p. 367) regards the 

 barred tail as a sign of immaturity. 



It is evident that the dark birds are a melanistic form, and that 

 the colour is not due to age. Such birds are common in the 

 Himalayas, the Northern Punjab, and in Sind, rare elsewhere, and 

 almost unknown out of India. Hume's darkest specimens were 

 all males, but an equally dark female was shot by Capt. Butler at 

 Hyderabad, Sind, and is now in the national collection. 



Bill brownish plumbeous, tip black ; cere yellowish green ; hides 

 brownish yellow; legs dingy pale lemon-yellow (Hume). 



Length of female about 24 inches ; tail 10'5 ; wing 18 to 19'25 : 

 tarsus 3-75 ; mid-toe without claw 1*65 ; bill from gape 2 : length 

 of male 22 ; wing 16-25 to 17'9. 



