Ardea stellaris Linnæus, Syst. Nat. ed. 10 (1758), 1, 144.
Botaurus stellaris Sharpe, Cat. Birds Brit. Mus. (1898), 26, 253;
Hand-List (1899), 1, 204; Blanford, Fauna Brit. Ind. Bds. (1898),
4, 405, fig. 99 (head); Oates, Cat. Birds' Eggs (1902), 2, 134;
McGregor, Bur. Government Laboratories (1905), 34, 29; McGregor
and Worcester, Hand-List (1906), 36.
Luzon (Babbitt). Temperate Palaearctic region, northwestern India,
Burma, China.
"Adult male.--Above tawny-yellow and black, the latter predominating
and occupying the center of the feathers, the sides of which are
tawny-buff, freckled and irregularly barred with black; lower back,
rump, and upper tail-coverts pale tawny-buff, mottled with bars or
cross-lines of dusky brown; marginal wing-coverts rufous, regularly
barred across with black; median and greater coverts tawny-buff,
with irregular bars or arrow-shaped markings of blackish brown, much
less pronounced on the greater coverts, all of which have a rufescent
tinge near the base; alula, primary-coverts, and quills blackish,
barred with rufous, the bars somewhat broken up on the inner webs
of the quills, which are also paler; the inner secondaries like the
scapulars, being tawny-buff on their edges and mottled in a similar
manner; tail-feathers tawny-buff, irregularly mottled with black bars
or cross-markings, more pronounced on the middle of the feathers;
crown of head uniform black, with a frill of erectile plumes on the
nape, these being tipped with tawny-buff, and the pale tips crossed
with lines of black; eyebrow, sides of face, and sides of the neck
tawny-buff, the eyebrow uniform except on the under edge, where the
feathers are barred with black; ear-coverts scarcely marked at all,
but the plumes of the sides of the neck narrowly barred with black,
and elongated into a frill which covers the hind neck, the latter
being clothed in dense down of a tawny-buff-color; the feathers below
the eye, and a streak along the cheeks and down the sides of the neck,
black; malar line of feathers and throat creamy white, with a central
line of reddish buff feathers slightly mottled with black bases; the
lower throat also creamy white, with four or five tolerably defined
broad lines of tawny-buff and black-mottled feathers; the lower part of
the ruff on the fore neck with narrow wavy lines of black; the breast
covered with down of a tawny-buff-color, and hidden by a large patch
of loose plumes on each side of the chest, which are mostly black
with tawny-buff margins; remainder of under surface creamy white,
streaked with black centers to the feathers, the black markings
slightly broken up with mottlings of tawny-buff; thighs and under
tail-coverts with scarcely any markings whatever; under wing-coverts
and axillars tawny-buff, the former narrowly lined with blackish, the
axillars more distinctly barred with dusky blackish. 'Bill greenish
yellow; legs and feet yellowish green; claws dark brown; iris yellow;
bare space before the eye yellowish green.' (Seebohm.) Length, about
610; culmen, 69; wing, 330; tail 112; tarsus, 96.
"Two of the three specimens collected by Mr. Robert Bergman at Yokohama
are apparently young birds and have the primary-coverts and quills
almost uniform, with a certain amount of rufous mottlings confined
to the inner webs; in this state of plumage B. stellaris has a great
resemblance to B. poeciloptilus but is always to be distinguished
from the last-named bird by the tawny-colored frill on the sides of
the neck, instead of the smoky brown one peculiar to the Australian
bird." (Sharpe.)
Order ANSERIFORMES.