THE MEXICAN GOSHAWK. 255 



The type specimen, No. 16525 (PI. 7, Fig. 7), U. S. National Museum col- 

 lection, from a set of two, Bendire collection, was taken by the writer on 

 June 6, 1872, on Rillitto Creek, near Tucson, Arizona. 



86. Archibuteo lagopus (Brunnich). 



ROUGH-LEGGED HAWK. 



Falco lagopus Brunnich, Ornithologia Borealis, 1764, 4. 

 Archibuteo lagopus Gray, List Genera of Birds, ed. 3, 1841, 3. 

 (B — C — R — , C — , U 347.) 



Geographical range: Nortliern parts of the Old World ; (Alaska?) 



The Rough-legged Buzzard has been included in the "A. 0. U. Code and 

 Check-list of N. A. Birds," based on specimens from Alaska, but Mr. Robert 

 Ridgway, in his "Manual of North American Birds, 1887," p. 240, in a foot-note 

 on this species, writes as follows: "So far as evidence to date tends to show, the 

 typical form of this species, if a distinctly American race be recognized, must 

 be expunged from the 'List of North American Birds.'" 



According to Mr. H. Seebohm, "the true home of the Rough-legged Buz- 

 zard Eagle is in the northern portions of the European and Asiatic continents. 

 It breeds throughout Arctic Europe and Asia, being a very common species in 

 Norway and Sweden, up to the North Cape, becoming rarer in Russia, yet more 

 plentiful in Siberia, where it ranges as far to the east as the watershed of the 

 Yenesay and Lena. In the winter it retires southward to various parts of cen- 

 tral and southern Europe and the steppes of Russian Turkestan."^ 



Mr. Harvie Brown found it breeding in south Norway in 1871, the nests 

 usually being placed in clefts of more or less inaccessible rocks. In Lapland, 

 according to Wolley, they often breed in firs. The number of eggs vary from 

 three to five. The nests are large, composed of sticks and lined with grasses; 

 when placed on cliffs, sticks are frequently dispensed with, and it consists of a 

 slight hollow lined with grasses. In its general habits it resembles our Amer- 

 ican Rough-legged Hawk in every respect, and the differences in plumage are 

 but very slight in the majority of specimens. 



According to Mr. Seebohm, the eggs vary greatly in size and markings, 

 some being poorly marked while others are very richly blotched with dark 

 red, or clouded and mottled with pale brown. In some eggs the coloring is 

 confined to a few large rich blotches of red, others are evenly spotted with 

 color just as intense over the entire surface. A more uncommon variety is 

 delicately streaked and penciled with a few irregular dashes of pale brown, 

 something like the eg^ of a Kite. Other varieties are seen in which all the 

 coloring is distributed in pale purplish shell markings, with pei'haps a few 

 streaks of rich brown. They vary from 2.25 by 2. 1 inches in length, and from 

 1.8 to 1.65 inches in breadth (equal to 57.15 to 53.34 millimetres in length and 

 45.72 to 41.91 millimetres in breadth). 



1 History of British Birds, Seebohm, 1883, Vol. I, pp. 111-115. 



