FALCO. — TINNUNCULUS. 121 



F. coZttmiario simUis, Bed ubique paUidior; mai^aritaceo-griseus ; fronte, supercilio et facie lateral! albis, anguste 

 nigro Btriolatis : subtus ochraseens, baud rufo tinctus, et plnmis medialiter brunneo striatis. Long, tota 

 circa 11-5, alae 7-9, caudsB 4-55, culm, 0-65, tarsi 1-5. (Descr. maris ex HermosiUo, Sonora. Mus. 

 nostr.) 



$. F. columharii $ similis, sed ubique paUidior. Long, tota circa 12-0, als 8-8. (Descr. feminse ex 

 Colorado. Mus. Brit.) 



ffab. North Ameeica, interior and western Plains from the Mississippi Valley to the 

 Pacific coast, and from Texas and Arizona north to the Saskatchewan ''. — Mexico, 

 HermosiUo in Sonora [Ferrari-Perez). 



This pale and apparently well-marked form of Merlin has been correctly surmised 

 by American ornithologists as likely to occur in Mexico. We possess a fine adult 

 male specimen procured by Sen or Ferrari-Perez at HermosiUo, in Sonora, on the 

 21st of November, 1887 ; this is the only example hitherto recorded from Central 

 America. 



TINNUNCULUS. 

 Tinnunculus, Vieillot, Ois. Am. Sept. i. p. 39 (1807), et auctt. 

 Cerchneis, Boie, Isis, 1826, p. 970; Sharpe, Cat. Birds Brit. Mus. i. p. 423. 



The genus Tinnunculus includes a number of small species which differ from the 

 true Falcons in the proportion of their toes, the outer and inner ones being nearly 

 equal in length and considerably shorter than the middle toe. There is but little 

 difference in the size of the sexes, a distinguishing mark in the Falconidse, where 

 the female is usually by far the larger bird. In the majority of the Kestrels the sexes 

 differ in colour, the male being handsomer than the female ; this is certainly the case 

 with American forms, but in some of the Old World members of the genus they are 

 alike in colour and size, and in the African species, T. rupicoloides and T.Jieldi, the 

 plumage is identical. Admitting T. sparverius as the type of the American Kestrels, 

 it must be allowed that several races existing in the Neotropical region are worthy of 

 definition ; but the characters insisted upon by Dr. Bowdler Sharpe, in his ' Catalogue 

 of Birds,' and by other modern writers, must, in our opinion, now be revised, too much 

 stress having been laid on the presence or absence of a rufous patch on the head and 

 also on the amount of spotting of the underparts. In the North- American T. sparverius^ 

 which is the only species occui-ring within our limits, and which can be separated 

 from its South- American representatives, the rufous patch on the crown is frequently 

 absent. 



1. Tinnunculus sparverius. 



The Little Hawk, Catesby, Nat. Hist. Carol, i. p. 5, t. 5 '. 



Falco sparveritis, Linn. Syst. Nat.i. p. 128'; Licht. Preis-Verz. Mex. Vog. p. 3'; Cab. J. f. Orn. 



1863, p. 58 *; Wagler, Isis, 1831, p. 517 '; Ferrari-Perez, Pr. U. S. Nat. Mus. ix. p. 168' ; 



Zeledon, An. Mus. Nac. Costa Rica, 1887, p. 125 ' ; Herrera, La Nat. (2) i. pp. 176 ', 320 ' ; 

 Biofc. CENTE.-AMEE., Aves, Vol. III., February 1901. 16 



