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COMMON BUZZARD. 
intensity towards the roots. The under parts are 
sometimes pale yellowish white, streaked on the 
throat and breast with shades of brown of different 
intensity, and on the belly and vent crossed by 
broad irregular bars ; sometimes they are of a 
uniform tint nearly as dark as the upper sur- 
face of the body and very little interrupted, and 
sometimes a very dark and deep band tinted with 
purple occupies the whole belly, while the other 
parts are streaked and marked with a moderate 
proportion of brown ; the plumes of the thighs 
are generally dark, crossed with reddish ; the tail 
is slightly rounded, the ground colour whitish, of 
a chaste grey tinted with ochraceous, or of a 
reddish yellow ; it is crossed by a broad bar of 
umber brown near the tip, and by seven or eight 
narrow ones of the same colour. In many of its 
variations it is extremely beautiful. The length 
of a male specimen before us is twenty inches, 
that of a female nearly twenty-three. 
Pehnis. — Generic characters. — Bill slender, 
weak, bending gradually from the base to 
the tip; edge of the mandible without a 
tooth, and very slightly sinuated outwards 
beneath the cere ; cere occupying nearly 
half the length of the bill; nostrils long, 
narrow, very obliquely placed in the cere, 
and opening forwards; lores and eyelids 
