17 2 FALCONIFORMES CHAP. 



marshes, or poised aloft with its broad expanded tail alone in 

 motion, a " creaking " or " neighing " alarm-note being apparently 

 the only cry. Twenty or thirty nests are commonly built close 

 together, and are slight platforms of twigs or plant-stems, with 

 a lining of aquatic herbage, supported on the reeds or bushes a 

 few feet above the water. The two or three eggs are whitish 

 with reddish- or yellowish-brown and grey blotches. The breeding- 

 quarters are constantly changed. 



Machaerorhamphus alcinus, of Tenasserim, Malacca, Borneo, 

 Sumatra, and New Guinea, is especially remarkable for the wide 

 gape of the short bill, which recalls that of the Caprimulgidae. All 

 the tail-coverts are unusually elongated, a fine crest of pointed 

 feathers adorns the occiput, and the plumage is black with a 

 chocolate tinge, the throat and middle of the chest being white, with 

 .a broad black streak down the former. M. anderssoni, of Damara- 

 Land, the Cameroons, and Madagascar, known to have crepuscular 

 tendencies and to feed partly on bats, is smaller, and has a white 

 abdomen ; M. revoili, of Somali-Land, is intermediate. 



Pernis apivorus, the Honey-Buzzard, which still breeds occasion- 

 ally in Britain in June, when the dense foliage easily causes it 

 to be overlooked, inhabits Europe generally, and probably extends 

 to Japan, migrating in winter to Madagascar and South Africa. 

 The extremely complex phases of plumage make it uncertain 

 whether it shares the Indian Region with the similar but crested 

 P. ptilorhynchus (cristatus), from which P. tioeeddalii, of Sumatra, 

 is doubtfully separable. The upper parts are brown, with greyish 

 head and three or four dark bands on the tail, the lower white 

 with brown spots and bars. White mottlings usually shew above, 

 and the female has the crown brown. The shortly-feathered 

 lores distinguish Pernis from Buteo. Our woodland species feeds 

 upon the ground, and devours bees, wasps, and grubs though 

 not honey from the comb, together with small mammals, birds, 

 slugs, and worms ; the cry is shrill, but seldom heard ; the nest, 

 composed of sticks lined with leaves, contains two or three whitish 

 eggs with rich purplish-red or brown markings. P. celebensis 

 differs in the rufous chest, which exhibits black streaks, that are 

 continued to the white throat with its black longitudinal band ; the 

 adult closely resembles Limnaetus lanceolatus, both being peculiar 

 to Celebes. Henicopernis longicaudatus, of Papuasia, is brown 

 barred with black above, and white streaked with blackish below, 



