GOS-HAWK. 87 



with darker brown : a band passing over the lores, eyes, 

 cheeks and ear-coverts, the nape of the neck, throat, breast, 

 belly and thighs, nearly white, with spots, transverse bars 

 and undulating lines of dull black ; under tail-coverts white ; 

 lores, cheeks and ear-coverts greyish-brown, forming an elon- 

 gated dark patch on the side of the head ; the legs and toes 

 yellow ; the claws black. 



The young birds have the beak, cere and eyes nearly 

 similar to those of the adults ; the top of the head, nape 

 and ear-coverts, ferruginous-white, each feather darker in 

 the middle ; back, wings and upper tail-coverts, brown, 

 margined with buff: upper surface of the tail with five 

 bands of dark brown and four bands of lighter brown, the 

 ends of all the feathers white ; primaries dark brown, barred 

 with two shades of brown on the inner webs; the chin, 

 throat, breast and belly, greyish-white, each feather with 

 a median elongated patch of dark brown ; thighs and under 

 tail-coverts with a dark brown longitudinal streak, instead 

 of a broad patch ; under surface of the wings greyish-white, 

 with transverse dusky bars ; under surface of the tail greyish- 

 white, with five darker greyish-brown transverse bars ; legs 

 and toes yellow-brown ; the claws black. 



Bewick, in his well-known work, having figured an adult 

 Gos-Hawk, a young bird was chosen for the illustration here 

 given.* 



* In America our Gos-Hawk is represented by an allied yet distinct species 

 the Aistur atricapillus, recognizable in its adult plumage by its darker head and 

 the much closer barring of its lower surface. Three examples of this bird, two 

 of which were adult females, have been killed in the British Islands. The first, 

 recorded by Mr. Robert Gray in 'The Ibis' for 1870 (p. 292), on Shechallion in 

 Perthshire in 1869, the second, also recorded in the same volume (p. 538), by 

 Sir Victor Brooke, on the Galtee mountains in Tipperary in 1870, and the 

 third, obtained at Parsonstown in the King's County in 1870, by Mr. Basil 

 Brooke (Zool. s.s. p. 2524). 



