parts in juvenile bateleurs, the cere and facial skin are a distinct pale grey-blue to green-blue. The juvenile’s feet are greenish-white to greyish-white, at 4-5 the cere, facial skin and feet turn yellow, then pink before finally reddening. The eyes are similar in hue to those of adult bateleurs but are a slightly lighter, being more honey-brown, while the bill of juveniles are mainly pale grey-blue in colour. In flight, the bateleur appears as a rather large raptor with disproportionately elongated, rather narrow and slightly bow-shaped wings, which appear pinched in at the bases, broad across the secondaries and regularly narrow, pointed and upturned at the tips. Upon sighting, the wings often catch the eye before the large head, which is proportionately slightly bigger even than their cousins, the snake eagles. The tail is so short in adult bateleurs that the feet extend below the tail tip, almost giving the impression that the raptor nearly has no tail. This is as opposed to juveniles, where the feet come up about short of the tail tip, with the feet coming to exceed the tail, which is shrinking via moults, in length around the 5th year of maturation. The adult bateleur’s wingspan is an extraordinary 2.9 times greater than its total length. The adult male bateleur is mostly black above with a chestnut back and tail and grey forewings, below he is black on the body, contrasting with a chestnut tail, as well as with the white wing linings and black flight feathers except for the greyish based primaries. The adult female bateleur is similar in plumage to the male overall but differs in her black-tipped grey secondaries above and more extensively white underwings with the black on the female confined to the wingtips and trailing edges. The juvenile bateleur on the wing appears broader winged and especially longer tailed with a largely uniform brown coloration, including the greater coverts, with paler feather mainly about the head as well as on the flight feathers. Size The bateleur is a mid-sized eagle and large raptor. It is likely the second heaviest of the Circaetinae subfamily of accipitrids. By far the largest of the subfamily is the Philippine eagle which is well over twice as massive and is far larger in all aspects of measurement than the bateleur, with a drastically differing structure (broad, relatively short wings, very long legs and tail). One traditional