OUR BIRDS OF PREY. 



77 



feathering of the male and female is extraordinarily pronounced. 

 The male bird resembles in general colouring many of the gulls, its 

 back blue-grey, its under parts from light grey to white. The 

 female — known commonly as "the Ringtail" — bears no kind of 

 resemblance to her partner, for she is coloured brown. It is most 



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THE KITE (MJLVUS ICTJNUS). 



amusing and most instructive now to read the view of the older 

 writers on these birds, and to see the hopeless confusion into which 

 the differences of plumage led them. What with the light plumage 

 of the old 'male, the brown of the old female, the various inter- 

 mediate stages of the young males, the ornithologists of that day 



