98 BRITISH BIRDS, WITH THEIR NESTS AND EGGS. 
the heather, varies in size and material, Seebohm states, with the locality. ‘‘ Harvie 
Brown describes one on the bare hill-side as merely consisting of a few loosely 
arranged heather-stems with a shallow depression in the centre lined with wiry 
dry grass broken into small pieces. Another, placed in deep heather, was more 
than a foot high, and composed of stout rank stems and roots of heather.” Some- 
times the nest is placed in a corn-field, at other times in a swamp, and in this case 
it is built up with stalks and sedge until it is a foot or eighteen inches above the 
wet surface. The eggs are from four to six, bluish white, occasionally slightly 
marked with rusty red; they measure from 1°8 to 1°65 inches in length, by from 
1'5 to 1°65 inches in breadth. 
The adult male is blue-grey upon the upper parts; rump white; primaries 
black; central tail feathers light blue-grey, outer ones whitish, faintly barred with 
brown; chin and throat blue-grey, gradually fading into white on the under parts; 
cere, irides, and legs pale yellow; claws black; beak dark horn colour. 
The adult female has the forehead and an irregular streak over the eye buff; 
a dark patch of brownish red on either side of the eye; chin buffy-white; head 
and neck dark umber-brown, striped and spotted with rufous-buff and buffy-white ; 
upper parts generally dark brown, less profusely marked with warm buff; upper 
tail-coverts white, with a few rufous dots; central tail-feathers dark brown, outer 
ones pale buff, all with five dark bars, and tipped with pale buff; under parts buff, 
striped with dull brown and reddish brown; under surface of wings white, barred 
with blackish-grey; irides brown; cere and legs yellow; claws black; beak 
blackish horn. Length of male 19 inches; of female 21 inches. 
Young birds resemble the adult female, but are much more rufous, especially 
on the under parts, which are warm rufous buff, striped with reddish brown, and 
the tail is broadly tipped with pale rufous. 
The facial disk and ruff in the Hen-Harriers are well-defined, being blue-grey 
in the male, and in the female brownish-white, the ruff closely striped with dark 
umber brown. 
