400 
BLUE HAWK, OR HEN-HARRIER. 
slightly rounded. All the tail-feathers have white shafts, and 
are pure white beneath ; the middle ones are bluish grey, the 
lateral almost purely white ; somewhat greyish on the outer 
vane, and obsoletely barred with blackish grey on the inner. 
The feet are bright yellow, and the claws black ; the tarsus is 
three inches long, and feathered in front for an inch. 
The female is larger, being between twenty and twenty- 
one inches long, and between forty-four and forty-seven in 
extent ; the tarsi, wings, and tail, proportionally longer, but 
strictly corresponding with those of the male. The general 
colour above is chocolate-brown, more or less varied with yel- 
lowish rufous ; the space round the orbits is whitish, and the 
auriculars are brown ; the small stijOP feathers forming the well- 
marked collar, or ruff, are whitish rusty, blackish brown along 
the shaft ; the feathers of the head and neck are of a darker 
brown, conspicuously margined with yellowish rusty ; on the 
nucha, for a large space, the plumage is white at the base, as 
well as on the sides of the feathers," so that a little of that co- 
lour appears, even without separating them ; those of the back 
and rump are hardly, if at all, skirted with yellowish rusty, but 
the scapulars and wing-coverts have each four regular large 
round spots of that colour, of which those farthest from the 
base lie generally uncovered ; the upper tail-coverts are pure 
white, often, but not always, with a few rusty spots, constitu- 
ting the so-called white rump, which is a constant mark of the 
species in all its states of plumage. The throat, breast, belly, 
vent, and femorals, pale yellowish rusty, streaked lengthwise 
with large acuminate brown spots, darker and larger on the 
breast, and especially the under wing-coverts, obsolete on the 
lower parts of the body, which are not spotted. The quills are 
dark brown, whitish on the inner vane, and transversely banded 
with blackish ; the bands are much more conspicuous on the 
inferior surface, where the ground colour is greyish white. 
The tail is of a bright yellowish rusty, the two middle tail- 
feathers, dark cinereous ; all are pure white at the origin, and 
