Mr. R. B. Sharpe’s Catalogue of Accipitres. 373 
list of the specimens of that Buzzard in the British Museum 
includes two immature examples obtained in Natal by the 
late Sir A. Smith, which afford evidence of the extensive and 
irregular wanderings of the young birds of this species, and 
perhaps also make it probable that Le Vaillant. was accurate 
in stating that he had obtained this Buzzard during his travels 
in South Africa, although it is, on the other hand, quite pos- 
sible that the bird he obtained there was Nisaétus pennatus, 
and that afterwards, writing from memory, he confused the 
Booted Eagle with the Rough-legged Buzzard. 
Be this as it may, the specimens obtained by Sir A. Smith 
(presuming that no error has occurred respecting their lo- 
cality) form an exception to the statement in Mr. Dresser’s 
article on this species, in his ‘ Birds of Europe,’ that “it has 
never been met with south of the Mediterranean.” I may 
add that in the Catalogue of the birds in the British Museum, 
published in 1848, only one of these Natal specimens is men- 
tioned, which probably arose from the other specimen not 
having been mounted. 
The Norwich Museum contains two newly fledged nestlings 
of this species, which are remarkable for the conspicuous 
rufous margins of their feathers. In one of these this pecu- 
liarity strongly pervades both the upper and under portions 
of the plumage; in the other it is less conspicuous, and is 
limited to the upper parts only. Such rufous margins, in great 
measure, disappear from the plumage of the young bird in 
the course of the first autumn, but are frequently more or 
less reassumed at subsequent moults. 
The change from the immature to the fully adult dress is 
probably not completed till the third year ; and the specimen 
described by Mr. Sharpe as an ‘‘adult female”. does not 
appear to me to have attained its full adult plumage, which is 
well described at page 119 of vol. 1. of Professor Newton’s 
edition of Yarrell’s ‘ British Birds,’ and also in Mr. Dresser’s 
article to which I have already referred: this adult stage is 
especially characterized by the dark transverse bands on a 
white ground which appear to be always more or less con- 
spicuous on the upper surface of the tail in fully adult 






















