3 
Birds of Celebes ; Falconidae. 
basal one indistinct; breast much paler and more of a dark wood-brown tone (S. Ce- 
lebes: Platen — 0 10707). 
Male. Similar to the female, but the white bars of the under parts more sharply defined 
and extending further towards the hreast (whereas in the female they form sooner 
into disconnected spots) ; the brown bars on the under tail-coverts narrower {(^ vix 
ad. S. Celebes — Platen, C 10708; 3 ad. & vix ad. Sarasin Coll., N. & 
S. Celebes). 
“Iris gold-yellow; periocular skin and cere green-yellow; bill blue-black; feet 
lemon- (or gold-) yellow” in both sexes (Platen a 13). 
Female in albescent immature plumage. Head, crest and neck fulvous white with dark 
hrown shaft-streaks; the upper parts dis|)lay a varied plumage of sepia and fulvous 
brown, the feathers in general having dark centres and pale bases and margins; pri- 
maries and secondaries tipped with white; tail pale hrown above, white below, 
and crossed with 5 to 6 indistinct dark hands, tip white; whole of, under sur- 
face huffy white, streaked from the hreast downwards with dark hrown, which often 
spreads out in a washy manner in lighter brown over much of the feather. In this 
specimen the cross-harred feathers of maturity' are sprouting at the flanks (S. Celebes 
— Hr. 6683). 
A male in albescent plumage recently obtained by the Drs. Sarasin at 
Kema, Aug. 5*^^, 1893, corresponds with the above description of the female; ear- 
coverts and suhocular region black; under surface purer white, with fewer and smaller 
hrown streaks, here and on the upper surface not showing a general wash of rufous 
apparent on comparison in the other specimen. “Iris yellow; legs and feet yellowish 
grey; hill black, at the base blue” (Sarasin). A second male is much more rufo- 
fulvous in general tint than the other (Macassar, 12. IX. 95: Sarasin Coll.). 
A specimen in the Leyden Museum (N. Celebes — Faber, J883) is half in 
albescent plumage, half in adult. Wings and tail as in albescent specimens; under 
wing-coverts white, some tipped with rufous hrown; hack, breast, abdomen and thighs 
much as in Q ad. 
First plumage. The full-fledged young of this species is not known, hut in the cases of 
Spilornis hacha (Java), 8. cheela (India) and 8. spilogaster (Ceylon), young birds of 
each in the first stage of dress have been described or figured (Schlegel, Yalkv. 
N. I. pi. 22, f. 3; Sharpe, Cat. B. I, 287; Legge, B. Ceylon 1880, 62; Bernstein, 
J. f. 0. 1860, 425), from which it will he seen that the first plumage often — perhaps 
always much resembles that of full maturity. Whether young birds always assume 
this mature-looking dress on first leaving the nest, and then lose it and put on the 
immature albescent plumage , and finally recover the adult type of coloration , or, 
whether the members of the genus are dimorphous when young — both mature- 
plumaged and albescent individuals existing from the nest, — are questions upon 
which opinion is divided, and facts, unfortunately, are as yet insufficient to allow of 
their being answered. The albescent type of immature plumage probably occurs in 
all species of the genus. Specimens in this dress are figured by Schlegel in the 
cases of 8. hacha, 8. rufipectus and 8. sulaensis [b J; c J; Schl. , Yalkv. pi. 22, f. 3); 
similar immature birds of 8. davisoni Hume, 8. rutherfoi'di Swinh. and S', cheela 
Lath, have been described (Hume, Str. F. II, 148; Bingham, ih. IX, 144; Oates, 
B. Brit. Burmah, II, 194; Sharpe, Cat. B. I, 287), and there is a Q specimen of 
8. holospilus Yigors from Mindanao in this plumage in the Dresden Museum 
(Hr. 13822). Grurney considered this to be the second plumage Schlegel and 
Colonel Legge express the opinion that it is a more or less frequent variation of 
1 * 
