74 



WINTER FALCON. 



Length of the Winter Hawk twenty inches, extent forty-one 

 inches, or nearly three feet six inches; cere and legs yellow, the 

 latter long, and feathered for an inch below the knee ; bill bluish 

 black, small, furnished with a tooth in the upper mandible; eye 

 bright amber, cartilage over the eye very prominent, and of a dull 

 green; head, sides of the neck and throat dark brown, streaked 

 with white; lesser coverts with a strong glow of ferruginous; se- 

 condaries pale brown, indistinctly barred with darker; primaries 

 brownish orange spotted with black, wholly black at the tips ; tail 

 long, slightly rounded, barred alternately with dark and pale brown; 

 inner vanes white, exterior feathers brownish orange ; wings when 

 closed reach rather beyond the middle of the tail ; tail coverts white, 

 marked with heart-shaped spots of brown, breast and belly white, 

 with numerous long drops of brown, the shafts blackish ; femoral 

 feathers large, pale yellow ochre, marked with numerous minute 

 streaks of pale brown; claws black. The legs of this bird are re- 

 presented by different authors as slender ; but I saw no appearance 

 of this in those I examined. 



The female is considerably darker above and about two inches 

 longer. 



