108 WINTER FALCON. 



Length of the Winter Hawk twenty inches, extent forty-one 

 inches, or nearly three feet six inches; cere and legs yellow, 

 the latter long, and feathered for an inch below the knee; bill 

 bluish black, small, furnished with a tooth in the upper man- 

 dible; eye bright amber, cartilage over the eye very promi- 

 nent, and of a dull green; head, sides of the neck, and throat, 

 dark brown, streaked with white; lesser coverts with a strong 

 glow of ferruginous; secondaries pale brown, indistinctly barred 

 with darker; primaries brownish orange, spotted with black, 

 wholly black at the tips; tail long, slightly rounded, barred al- 

 ternately with dark and pale brown, inner vanes white, exte- 

 rior feathers brownish orange; wings, when closed, reach rather 

 beyond the middle of the tail;, tail-coverts white, marked with 

 heart-shaped spots of brown; breast and belly white, with nu- 

 merous long drops of brown, the shafts blackish; femoral fea- 

 thers large, pale yellow ochre, marked with numerous minute 

 streaks of pale brown; claws black. The legs of this bird are 

 represented by different authors as slender; but I saw no appear- 

 ance of this in those I examined. 



The female is considerably darker above, and about two 

 inches longer. 



