112 ACCIPITRES. 



the owls, but something similar in structure and use. These 

 appendages are most conspicuous in the hen harrier, which is 

 the one that beats most about the furze, and other close and 

 tangled bushes in which so many birds nestle and conceal 

 themselves. The harriers have the wings and tail more 

 produced than the hawks, the wings more pointed, and the 

 tail rounded. There are at least three of them ; but some of 

 them are at times called buzzards, though they are far more 

 active in their habits than these birds. 



THE HEN HARRIER. (FalcO CyaneUS). 



The sexes in this species differ so much, both in size and 

 in plumage, that they have often been described as different 

 birds, and some astonishment has been expressed that the 

 female and nest of the grey one (which is the male) could 

 never be found. Even in the same sex, the colours are not a 

 little perplexing ; for in all birds where there are remarkable 

 differences of plumage in the sexes, and a passage from the 

 plumage of the one to that of the other with the progress to 

 maturity, as there generally is, there are not only always 

 individuals in some of the intermediate stages of the plumage, 

 but there are individuals in which the change never com- 

 pletely takes place, and others in which the plumage of the 

 other sex is partly assumed. Colours vary also with dif- 

 ference of age, situation, and season ; so that difference of 

 colour is never a sufficient foundation for difference of species. 

 Similarity of situation and habits are much more to be de- 

 pended upon. There is, at least in some parts of the country, 

 a further perplexity about these birds, arising from the fact 

 that the ash-coloured harriers, though smaller birds, different 

 in the general tint of their plumage, and local as compared 

 with the hen harriers, have yet similar differences of appear- 

 ance in the sexes. 

 - The full-grown female hen harrier is about twenty inches 



