OCR Text |
Show 1877-] THE MARQUIS OF TWEEDDALE ON BATRACHOSTOMUS. 443 vous or rusty brown, the black intermediate narrow bands showing through. Wing-coverts rufous brown, traversed with distinct dark-brown irregular lines. Some of the minor coverts with rusty-fulvous terminal spots. Many of the other wing-coverts with large ovoid pure white terminal spots, with a dark brown margin above and on their inner margins. Shorter scapulars with the inner webs fulvous or rusty, crossed by dark brown lines or narrow bars. Outer webs pale greyish white, crossed by fine zigzag brown lines and black terminal dots. Some of the longer the same, but with ill-defined white ocelli on their outer margins. Other long scapulars alike on both webs, pale rufous, much vermiculated with pale greyish-brown and with broad intervening incomplete bands of white or greyish- . white. Quills dark brown, which runs at broad intervals through the pale rufous of the outer webs. Tips of the quills mottled with pale rufous. Tertiaries pale rufous or tawny-rufous, much striated with fine irregular brown lines ; a bolder dark brown subterminal mark. Inner tertiaries obsoletely marked with four or five pale greyish white bands. Chin and throat rusty, with brown transverse lines. Some of the lateral feathers with a dark brown or black sub-terminal spot. Lower throat-plumes with terminal large pure white drops, margined above with a narrow dark brown line, thus forming a white necklace. Upper pectoral plumes like those of the chin and throat, but with subterminal dark brown marks and some admixture of grey in the ground-colour, some faintly tipped with greyish white, others with fulvous. Lower pectoral plumes pale fulvous-grey, with transverse dingy brown irregular lines, and broadly tipped with pure white, faintly edged with brown. Lower down these white-tipped plumes have a much more white than fulvous ground at the base. Abdominal feathers fulvous, terminated with white, and transversely striated with pale greyish brown. Ventral region and under tail-coverts fulvous-rusty, with obscure white terminal spots and subdued subterminal brown marks. Under wing-coverts the same. Axillaries dingy fulvous-grey, tipped almost white. Frontal rigid plumes and bristles black. Wing 4*75, tail 4*75, tarsus 0*50, middle toe 0*70, bill from forehead 0*90, width of gape 1*20. Structure normal. Tarsus feathered anteriorly for a quarter of its length. No. 5, d (?), ex Malabar ? (Mus. Brit.). This specimen is labelled Madras; but its mode of preparation is what we find in all west-coast trade skins. None of my Ceylon examples resemble it excepting in the white collars, scapulars, and pectoral plumes ; and these last are not so prominent as in B. moniliger d, ex Ceylon. General coloration mixed grey, fulvous, black, and white ; only traces of pale rufous. Frontal plumes tawny at base, much vermiculated with brown and with black subterminal spots or bands. Feathers of the head and occipital crest pale ashy brown, many with black subterminal spots, and all tipped with very pale fulvous ; equally pale fulvous spots on either web ; others so marked and coloured, but without the black spots. Feathers comprising the nuchal collar tawny at base, with a few fine transverse irregular pale |