ASII.COLOUIIED FALCON. 
7 
united to the outer by a short membrane, the inner divided ; the back 
toe articulated interiorly, and upon the same level with the others. 
Claws long-, compressed, sharp ; the middle one being denticulated on 
the inside. Wings of middle size, the first quill a little shorter than 
the second and third, which are the longest in the wing. 
The genus is divided by Temminck into two sections ; — the genuine 
Herons and the Bitterns.* 
ARDEID^ (Vigors.) — * Birds of the Heron and Bittern-kind.* 
ASH-COLOURED FALCON (^Circus cinerarius, Vigors.) 
*Falco cinerarius, Mont. Diet, and Supp. — Trans. Linn. Soc. 9. p. 188. — Circus cine- 
rarius, Vigors, Zool. Journ. — Busard Montagu, Temm. 1. p. 76. — Die Halb- 
weihe, Naumann, Vogel, 4. p. 180. T. 21. — Ash-coloured Falcon, Mont. Orn. 
Diet. & Supp. — Ash-coloured Harrier, Selby, N.ll. and N. P. 28. 
*In a paper published in the Linnsean Transactions, Montagu thus 
describes a specimen of this bird, killed on the 10th of August, 1803, 
near Kingsbridge, in Devonshire. It weighed nine ounces and three 
quarters : length eighteen inches : breadth three feet eight inches 
and a half : the length from the elbow to the end of the third quill 
feather (which is the longest) fifteen inches and a half : length of the 
tail, from the gland on the rump, nine inches and a half. Bill black, 
the base and cere greenish : irides and orbits bright yellow : crown 
of the head, cheeks, throat, under part of the neck, back, and sca- 
pulars cinereous-brown ; the feathers of the last are cinereous at their 
base, with the tips brown : the smaller coverts are marked the same 
as the scapulars : the greater coverts are also cinereous-brown, the 
exposed part of each feather darkest, but not tipped like the others : 
the eight prime quills are dusky-black, the last with a dash of cine- 
reous ; the first is very short, the third by far the longest : secondary 
quills cinereous-brown above, pale beneath, with three remarkable dusky 
bars, traversely placed, and nearly in parallel lines, each half an inch in 
breadth ; in some of these feathers when separated from the wing, the 
rudiment of a fourth bar is observable at the base ; but of these three or 
four bars only one is visible on the upper side of the wing, the others 
being hid by the coverts ; this is about two inches from the tijis of the 
feathers ; on the under part of the wing two bars are very conspicuous, 
the others are paler and hidden by the smaller under coverts, the first 
row of which is white, with a large dusky bar across the middle ; the 
rest are bright bay, more or less spotted, barred, or margined with white: 
the under parts of the body, including the under tail coverts and thighs, 
white, with a broad streak of bright bay down the shaft of each feather i 
under scapulars with broad alternate bars of bay and white : the tail is 
