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;