30 TlMEHRI. 
and though its beak is small, it is 6trongly hooked and 
the tooth sharp and strong. It is of a black colour above ; 
with slaty edgings to the feathers ; the throat is of a 
reddish and yellowish-white, passing into reddish brown 
at the margins of the upper breast and neck, where it 
almost forms a half-collar ; the breast and under coverts 
of the wings are black with narrow white edgings to the 
feathers ; the belly and thighs rich chestnut, while the 
wings and tail are barred with white. 
The food of this species is of a very mixed kind, con- 
sisting of small mammals, birds, reptiles and inserts, and 
it will often be observed darting from its lofty perch at 
its prey and returning to the same point to devour what 
it has caught, — just as will so often be noted in the 
case of the falcon-kite, and the great-billed buzzard. 
Very closely resembling the foregoing, but of very 
much larger size, is the true orange-breasted falcon, 
Falco aurantius (=F* deiroleucus.) This species reaches 
a length of about 12-13 inches in the male and of about 
15-16 in the female. In colouring it is much like the 
preceding falcon, but the throat is of a pure white, sharply 
defined from the upper breast which is chestnut; the 
lower part of the breast is black with broad orange- 
brown spots and edgings to the feathers, and this same 
arrangement of tints is continued on to the under 
coverts of the wing. The length of the median toe, 
without the claw, is much greater than that of the tarsal 
bone of the leg — a contrast with the two preceding 
species in which the reverse is the case. In young 
specimens, the upper feathers are more or less margined 
with reddish or yellowish white, retained for some time 
on the eyebrows ; the edgings of the under feathers are 
