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BLUE HAWK, OR HEN-HARRIER. 297 
The female is larger, being between twenty and twenty-one 
inches long, and between forty-four and forty-seven in extent ; 
the tarsi, wings, and tail, proportionally longer, but strictly 
corresponding with those of the male. The general colour 
above is chocolate-brown, more or less varied with yellowish 
rufous ; the space round the orbits is whitish, and the auri- 
culars are brown ; the small stiff feathers forming the well- 
marked collar or ruff are whitish rusty, blackish brown along 
the shaft; the feathers of the head and neck are of a darker 
brown, conspicuously margined with yellowish rusty ; on the 
nucha, for a large space, the plumage is white at the base, as 
well as on the sides of the feathers, so that a little of that col- 
our appears, even without separating them ; those of the back 
and rump are hardly, if at all, skirted with yellowish rusty, but 
the scapulars and wing-coverts have each four regular large 
round spots of that colour, of which those farthest from the 
base he generally uncovered ; the upper tail-coverts are pure 
white, often, but not always, with a few rusty spots, constitu- 
ting the so-called white rump, which is a constant mark of the 
species in all its states of plumage. The throat, breast, belly, 
vent, and femorals, pale yellowish rusty, streaked lengthwise 
with large acuminate brown spots, darker and larger on the 
breast, and especially the under wing-coverts, obsolete on the 
lower parts of the body, which are not spotted. The quills are 
dark brown, whitish on the inner vane, and transversely banded 
with blackish; the bands are much more conspicuous on the 
inferior surface, where the ground colour is greyish white. 
The tail is of a bright yellowish rusty, the two middle tail- 
feathers dark cinereous ; all are pure white at the origin, and 
regularly crossed with four or five broad blackish bands ; their 
tips are more whitish, and the inferior surface of a greyish 
white, like that of the quills, but very slightly tinged with 
rusty, the blackish bands appearing to great advantage, except 
on the outer feathers, where they are obsolete, being less de- 
fined even above. 
The young male is almost perfectly similar in appearance to 
