108 GOSHAWK. 



reddish white, or light brown streaked with dark brown. 

 Nape, light reddish brown, with an oblong dusky mark on 

 the centre of each feather; throat, white or cream white, 

 speckled with brown; breast, reddish or yellowish white, 

 streaked longitudinally with brown on the centres of the 

 feathers, the shafts still darker, narrowing towards the tip of 

 each, until after the second moult: when the transverse bars 

 appear, they are at first fewer in number and larger than in 

 after years; back, reddish or yellowish brown, the feathers 

 edged with a paler shade, or yellowish white; primaries, 

 dusky, with dark brown, and tipped with whitish; secondaries 

 and tertiaries, dusky, with greyish brown bars; greater and 

 lesser under wing coverts, light brown, or rufous white, 

 streaked as the feathers on the breast; tail, greyish brown, 

 with four or five bars of blackish brown alternating with the 

 former colour, and tipped with white; underneath, greyish 

 white, barred with five bars of greyish brown; tail coverts as 

 the back; under tail coverts as the breast, but only marked 

 with brown at the tips. Legs and toes, dull yellow, inclining 

 to green at the joints: the feathers on the legs are light 

 brown or rufous white, streaked, but only on the shafts, as 

 the feathers on the breast; claws, brownish black, those of 

 the inner toes larger than those of the outer. 



The young female is lighter coloured than the young male, 

 and the dark markings on the breast are larger. It is some 

 years before the fine grey of the back and the bluish white 

 of the breast are assumed. 



White varieties of this species have been sometimes met 

 with, and some of a tawny colour with a few brown markings. 



'I have compared,' says Macgillivray, 'British and French 

 with American specimens, both in the adult and young states, 

 and am perfectly persuaded that no real difference exists 

 between them. Were we to form specific distinctions upon 

 such trifling discrepancies as are exhibited by the Goshawk 

 of America and that of Europe, we might find that our 

 common ptarmigan, our bullfinch, wheatear, and kestrel, are 

 each of two or three species. Cuvier, in my opinion, very 

 strangely refers to the 'Falco atricapillus' of Wilson, which 

 is the American Goshawk, as a species of 'Hierofalco,' that 

 is, as intimately allied to the Jer-Falcon. The only name 

 by which this species is known in Britain, is that prefixed 

 to this article, but variously written Goshawk, Goss-hawk, 

 or Gos-hawk, and apparently a corruption of Goose Hawk.' 



