136 BritISH BIRDS WITH THEIR NESTS AND EGGS. 
rufous brown, fading off to lighter; tail brown, tipped with white, with numerous 
narrow darker wavy bands; primaries blackish brown. 
Seebohm considers that there are two forms of the Honey-Buzzard, a darker 
and a lighter, with intermediate forms which are much spotted; while Dresser 
believes that, in the younger birds, there is a tendency towards albinism. As in 
most of the Buzzards and Eagles there is a slight gloss upon the plumage. 
Macgillivray terms the Honey-Buzzard ‘the Brown Bee-Hawk.” 
Family—FALCONIDA. 
GREENLAND FALcon. 
Falco candicans, GMEL. 
Ww this powerful and beautiful bird, the great White Falcon of the Polar 
regions, the true Falcons are now reached, of which the well-known 
Peregrine is regarded as the type; they are birds of great courage, swift and 
strong on wing; greatly valued throughout the world for the assistance which, 
when trained, they can render to sport, and to be distinguished by the projecting 
tooth on the cutting edge of their upper mandibles; by their flight feathers—the 
first and third being equal in length, while the second is the longest; by their 
irides being hazel, instead of the yellow of the less noble Hawks; while some of 
them, the Peregrine, Hobby, and Merlin, have a characteristic line of black feathers 
extending downwards on either side from the gape, termed by falconers the 
moustache. 
The Greenland Falcon is the whitest of the four species of Gyrfalcon now 
recognized by ornithologists, inhabiting the mnorthern-most parts of the old and 
new worlds, never nesting south of the Arctic circle. It is only by some accident, 
when following the autumnal migrations of wild fowl, that it comes so far south 
as the southern shores of the British Isles. Two have occurred in Cornwall; one 
