BLUE HAWK, OR HEN-HARRIER. 
27 
of the colour of the back, but a shade lighter ; breast, 
belly, flanks, thighs, under wing-coyerts, and under 
tail-coverts, pure white, without any spot or streak. 
The wings measure nearly fourteen inches, and, when 
closed, reach only two-thirds the length of the tail, 
which is eight and a half inches long, extending by 
more than two inches beyond them ; the primaries, of 
which the first is shorter than the sixth, the second 
and fifth subequal, and the third and fourth longest, are 
blackish, paler on the edges, and white at their origin, 
which is more conspicuous on their inferior surface ; the 
secondaries have more of the white, being chiefly bluish 
gray on the outer web only, and at the point, which is 
considerably darker. The tail is but very slightly 
rounded. All the tail-feathers have white shafts, and are 
pure white beneath ; the middle ones are bluish gray, the 
lateral almost purely white ; somewhat grayish on the 
outer vane, and obsoletely barred with blackish gray 
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, pro- 
portionally longer, but strictly corresponding with 
those of the male. The general colour above is clio- 
colate-brown, more or less varied with yellowish rufous ; 
the space round the orbits is whitish, and the auriculars 
are brown ; the small stiff 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 colour 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- 
