to be somewhat less scarce, but MM. Jaubert and Barthelemy-
Lapommeraye term it one of the rarest species of the south of
France. It does not seem to cross the Mediterranean, though
it has occurred in Sardinia, and, according to Mr. Charles
Wright, it is stated that two examples have been recognized
at Malta. I t has been included by several Spanish naturalists
as a bird of their country, but there can be little doubt that
the little Booted Eagle, Aquila pennata, has been the species
they mistook for it, and the same explanation is probably to
be given of the statements of Le Vaillant and Sir Andrew
Smith as to its occurrence at the Cape of Good Hope.
In northern Germany, especially towards the east, it is a
regular winter visitant, and Dr. Borggreve remarks that it
frequents the open country in preference to the forests. It
breeds in Pomerania, but whether it does so further to the
southward seems uncertain. Dr. Kjierbolling quotes authority
for a nest being found in Jutland, but its character
in Denmark generally is that of a bird of passage. In
Holland and Belgium, as with us, it appears to pass the
winter. Nearly all the Bough-legged Buzzards which occur
in the British Islands are in immature plumage, which in
this species, as in so many of the true Falcons, differs from
that ot the adult by the transverse instead of longitudinal
markings of the lower parts. Indeed, mature examples are
of a very rare occurrence in this country. Mr. Stevenson
says in his Birds of Norfolk that he has only known of
foui being killed in that and the adjoining county, one of
which was trapped in July, 1848, but he has kindly for-
warded information of a fifth obtained in the spring of the
present year (1871). By many ornithologists the change
which this species undergoes in its progress to maturity
has been erroneously described or not understood at all.
Mr. Gurney is of opinion that the fully adult dress is not
assumed until the third year. The old bird has heen but
seldom represented, there is however a very characteristic
figure of it in Naumann’s ‘ Vogel Deutschlands ’ (pi. xxxiv.)
and the beautiful plate in Mr. Gould’s ‘ Birds of Great
Britain leaves little to be desired, while an excellent
woodcut from a European example is to be found in Cooper’s
‘Birds of California,’ where as in the rest of North America
the true Buteo lagopus is represented by a closely allied
species, the B. sancti-johannis, characterized by its generally
more rufous, and sometimes much darker plumage.
As already stated, the Bough-legged Buzzard is subject to
some considerable individual variation, and it is impossible
in a few words to give a description that shall meet all cases.
Some adult birds in the Norwich Museum, however, present
an appearance as follows. The beak is dark horn-colour,
the cere yellow and irides hazel. The lores are thickly set
with black hairs. The top of the head, ear-coverts and
back of the neck are white, each feather having a dark yellowish
brown streak along the shaft, which streaks increase
in width backward so that less and less of the white is
shewn, and in some examples almost all admixture of -white
disappears upon the back and scapulars, while in others the
feathers of these parts are -white, with two or more broad
and irregular bars, a broad terminal band of dark brown,
and occasionally an edging of rust-colour. The upper
wing-coverts are similar, but there is usually a good deal
of white shewn along the outer edge of the fore-arm and
wrist. The primaries are brownish-black, often hoary on
the outer web, with a large patch of pure white at the base.
The secondaries and tertials are greyish-brown with several
bands of blackish-brown and a greyish-white tip. The
lower part of the back deep brown, the upper tail-coverts
white with two or more broad brown bars. The tail is pure
white at the base, and then crossed with two or three bars of
dark brown, the distal bar being about twice as broad as the
others, and the interspaces and tip white, often mottled with
greyish-brown and ferruginous. The chin, throat and upper
part of the breast, white with a dark brown irregularly shaped
patch in each feather, these patches being largest on the
sides of the breast, but altogether ceasing across its middle,
to reappear suddenly, a little lower down, in the more
regular form of brownish-black bars, which extend over the
belly and thighs. The under tail-coverts pure white. The