THE MALAYAN BEAHMINY KITE 
HaUastur indus intermedius (Gumey) 
Malay tmme:—Lmg me rah, 
Description : — As in the case of the sea-eag'k the young' 
birds of this species differ rather markedly in appearance from 
the adults. The adults are arrayed in a simple dress of bright 
chestnut and white. The head and the underparts rig^ht from 
the chin down to the middle of the abdomen are white with 
very thin dark lines down the centre of some of the feathers. 
These thin lines are known as the "shaft stripes". The back, 
wings and tail are chestnut except the wing quills which are 
black and the tip of the tail which is whitish. This description 
applies to both sexes. The young birds lack the pure white 
and the chestnut of the older birds and the whole of their 
plumag:e is of various shades of brow*n. At a short distance 
these young birds appear uniformly dark in appearance and 
very different from the adults which, when the sun catches 
their back and wings » glisten like burnished copper. Tn the 
harbour both young and old examples fly together in the same 
flock and sometimes one can notice birds of a particularly 
interesting age in which the plumage is neither one thing nor 
the other. 
The birds as found in Singapore differ slightly from the 
perhaps better-known brahminy kite of the Indian ports in that 
the sha/t-stripes are rather thinner, but the difference \s trivial 
and concerns the specialist. Further east still (in Australia) 
one meets with a species of kite again to the unpractised eye 
identical with both the brahminy kites of India and Malaya : 
in this form the shaft-stripes have quite disappeared. Thus 
from west to east we find but one species of bird varying in its 
pliunage in a small way and the three birds can be quoted as a 
good example of three "sub-spcctes" obviously all belonging 
to one "parent species' — the brahminy kite, HaHastur indus. 
The adults have the iris brown, the beak pale or brownish 
slate colour and the feet a greenish-yellow. 
Length about 19 inches, wing approximately 15 inches. 
[98] 
