104 FALCONULE. 



identity of these two birds be admitted, the Hen Harrier 

 may then be said to inhabit the whole of North America, 

 in addition to the other localities already enumerated ; and 

 I may add, that several species of true Harriers are now- 

 known to exist on each of the large continents of the Old 

 and New World. 



The male and female, it has already been stated, are 

 when adult so very different in colour as to have led for- 

 merly to the belief that they were distinct species ; and 

 we are indebted to Colonel Montagu for a series of ob- 

 servations detailed in the ninth volume of the Transactions 

 of the Linnean Society, and afterwards in the Supplement 

 to his Ornithological Dictionary, which, corroborated by 

 the more recent observations of others, have clearly de- 

 termined that the Hen Harrier and Ringtail are but the 

 adult male and female of the same species. 



The whole length of the male is about eighteen inches ; 

 the bill black, or bluish black ; the cere and irides yel- 

 low; the black hairs on the lore, or space between the 

 base of the beak and the eye, radiate from a centre, those 

 in a direction upward and forward meet and become 

 mixed with those of the opposite side over the ridge of the 

 cere, hiding the nostrils ; the whole of the head, neck, 

 back, wing-coverts, wings, and upper surface of the tail- 

 feathers, ash grey ; with the exception in my own speci- 

 men of a mottled brown spot on the nape of the neck, the 

 last remaining portion of its former brown plumage ; the 

 wing-primaries nearly black, the first the shortest and the 

 lightest in colour, the longest not reaching to the end of 

 the tail ; the chin and throat ash grey, like the other 

 parts of the neck ; the breast and belly lighter in colour, 

 becoming bluish white ; thighs and under tail-coverts 

 white ; under surface of the tail-feathers pale greyish 



