THE ISLANDS OF THE BAY OF BENGAL. 267 



cross barrings. This difference, as our large series from both 

 groups of islands show, is not dependent on either sex, locality 

 or season. It must be dependent on age, but all the birds seem 

 perfect adults, and though I fully believe that the uniform, 

 unbarred, lower surface is characteristic of the adult, I cannot 

 be perfectly positive of this. The sexes do not appear to differ 

 in any way either in size or plumage. 



The following are the dimensions and other particulars record- 

 ed from a series of twenty-five specimens, measured in the 

 flesh :— 



Length, 15 to 16'5 ; expanse, 21 to 23 ; wing, 7 to 7*75 ; 

 tail, from vent, 7*5 to 8*5 ; tarsus, 0'75 to 0*9 ; bill, from gape, 

 0-9 to 1*05; bill at front, '0*63 to 0-73. " 



The legs and feet are dull pinkish to dull reddish brown ; 

 tarsi brighter in front but paler behind ; bill, dull pinkish red 

 to dull horny red, pinker towards the gape ; irides light, but 

 bright, blue, encircled with a ring of carmine ; orbital skin 

 leaden blue. 



What I take to be the adult, has the whole lower parts 

 including the wing lining and axillaries, the whole of the 

 front, top, back and sides of the head, including cheeks and 

 ear-coverts, and the sides of the neck, a rich deep chesnut. 

 The whole of the forehead, crown, and occiput conspicuously 

 streaked with blackish brown ; these streaks being caused by 

 rather lengthened spots of this color, on each margin of each 

 feather, not far from the tips. The back of the neck and in- 

 terscapulary region, pale brown, tinged with rufous, most strongly 

 so on the nape, and closely freckled with irregular spotty bars 

 of dark brown ; a certain number of the feathers, at the base 

 of the ueck behind, with more strongly marked, transverse, black 

 tippings preceded by a narrow white bar. The coverts (except 

 the greater primary ones) scapulars and tertials pale hair brown, 

 every feather tipped with chesnut ; the tippings much brightest 

 and broadest (where indeed they are almost ferruginous) on the 

 lesser and median coverts, and dullest and narrowest on the ter- 

 tials and longest scapulars. The primaries and their greater coverts 

 and the secondaries hair brown, strongly suffused, especially 

 the two first, with ferruginous chesnut on the outer webs, and more 

 feebly so at the tips, and almost the whole of the inner webs, 

 except the tips of the first four or five primaries, and the extreme 

 tips of the rest of the primaries and secondaries, a delicate pale 

 chesnut. Middle back, nearly the same color as the scapulars, 

 but more rufescent ; rump, upper tail coverts and tail feathers, 

 a warm chesnut brown, the exterior three or four feathers on either 



