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Show 1876.] BIRDS OF NORTH-WESTERN INDIA." 779 meditating with two of my brother officers who were out with me whether we had time to dig out the animal, that a Falcon was seen scouring the plain, apparently in search of food. M y shikaree soon produced the bird, the first Saker I had seen in the flesh ; and though it is pale rufescent, or "desert-colour" generally, the oval spots on its rectrices, and light-coloured soft parts, as compared with Falcojugger, convinced me that it did not belong to that species, it was not until the following morning, when I had an opportunity of comparing it with several Laggars, that I really felt comfortable in m y identification. The bird proved to be a very old but small male, measuring 18*5 inches in length, with a wing of 13*5, or about the dimensions of an undersized $ F. jugger. From the adult of that species it differed most conspicuously in the coloration of its soft parts, the legs, feet, and cere of the latter being bright orange, while in the former (Saker) the corresponding parts are of a light dingy yellow ; the bill too was paler, the basal three fourths of the upper mandible, as also the whole of the lower one, being of a pearly white tinged with pink. As the various phases of the plumage of F. sacer have been so fully described by Hume*, 1 will merely remark in reference to the adult state of the present specimen, that the head and nape (particularly the latter) are pure white, with narrow central shaft-stripes, the mantle is of a uniform pale rufescent hue, the feathers being broadly edged with rufous of a darker shade, that all the rectrices have large oval white spots on both webs, with the exception of one of the central feathers, on which the spots have almost disappeared, and that the chin, throat, and breast are pure white, with only a few clove-brown spots across the breast, the markings on the sternum, flanks, abdomen, and tibial plumes being more numerous and having the form of ovate streaks instead of spots. Before leaving the subject of F. sacer, I should not omit to mention that the specimen in question has an abnormally shaped upper mandible, the tip of the bill, which is very sharp and pointed, being produced a third of an inch beyond the tooth or notch, and rounded over exactly as it is in the genus Palaornis. In reference to this deformity, the following remarks by Mr. Gurney (in epist.) will be read with interest:-"May not your F. sacer with the deformed bill have been a trained bird that had been turned off when it got old and past its best ? I have known birds of prey acquire a similar prolongation of the upper mandible in confinement, though perhaps not to the same extent" f. The Falcon, however, was in excellent condition, and showed no sign of previous captivity. Furthermore, it was evidently hunting on a plain that abounded with Hardwick's Uromastix, a Lizard that Jerdon has pointed out, on the authority of Punjab falconers, as constituting its " favourite food" in a feral state*]:; and as I can hardly believe that a Saker that had once been trained to strike such large game as the Bustard and Crane would revert to reptilian food, * Cf ' Stray Feathers,' vol. i. p. 152 ct seqq. t I possess a female specimen of Pyrrhulauda grisea that has a similar prolongation of the upper mandible. \ Cf. ' The Ibis ' for 1871, p. 239. |