146 
allen’s naturalist’s library. 
the nest, and off flew the bird like an arrow, taking all the 
party by surprise. She had been sitting close the whole time, 
and had disregarded all the talking and noise we had made 
beneath the tree. After flying round for some time, at a great 
height in the air, above the nest, she disappeared for half an 
hour, when she suddenly came gliding through the wood 
towards her home, and was shot by Captain Shelley. The 
male was trapped the next morning on the nest, and both birds 
proved to be in immature plumage. 
Eggs. — The eggs of the Sparrow-Hawk vary greatly in their 
colour and markings, and are sometimes very handsome. The 
clutch consists of from three to four eggs, on rare occasions 
five. The ground-colour is a faint greenish-white or else quite 
white, and sometimes the eggs are entirely unspotted. Others 
are blotched or even marbled with dark reddish-brown, in 
which chestnut and lilac are mingled. The distribution of 
the markings is thoroughly irregular, for sometimes these 
brown or rufous markings are distributed over the whole egg, 
and are more or less broken up into small spots or blotches, 
while in others the rufous markings are gathered at one or 
other end of the egg, leaving its opposite pole uniformly white, 
while in certain specimens in the British Museum the mark- 
ings form a ring round the centre of the egg, leaving the two 
ends unspotted and not marked in any way. Axis, i‘S5~t‘75 1 
diam., i- 25 -f 4 . 
THE BUZZARDS. SUB-FAMILY BUTEONIN^. 
In all the remaining Birds of Prey we find the legs much 
shorter than in the Hawks and Harriers, and the proportions 
of the tibia and tarso-metatarsal bones are different, the 
former being much longer than the latter, and not equal in 
length, as it is in the long-legged Hawks. 
I’he Buzzards may be recognised from the Eagles and Fal- 
cons, which are the other two groups of these shorter-legged 
Birds of Prey, by having the hinder aspect of the tarsus scaled, 
and not reticulated. By this character we know that some 
of the largest of Raptorial birds, such as the Great Harpy 
Eagle {Thrasaetus harpyid) of South America, are Buzzards 
