Crossword-Solution: AVINE 5 letters, 11 clues 🏆 scrabble score: 8

Then there was the marsh-harrier--and the same might have been a kind of owl if it wasn't a sort of hawk--who flapped up like some gigantic moth, and dogged his steps, only waiting--he felt sure of it--for the polecat to slip, or meet a foe, or have an accident, or something, before breaking its own avine neutrality.

The whole wing is consequently, although essentially avine, still reptilian in the unfused state of the metacarpals and the numbers of the phalanges.

The hind-limb is typically avine, with intertarsal joint, distally reduced fibula, and the three elongated metatarsals which show already considerable anchylosis; reduction of the toes to four, with 2, 3, 4 and 5 phalanges; the hallux is separate, and as usual in recent birds posterior in position.

That chapter of comparative anatomy (together with other anatomical details, for which see the separate articles) is now dealt with in the article SKULL; here only the most avine features are alluded to, and since some of Parker's original illustrations have been retained, the description has been shortened considerably.

The _syrinx_ or lower larynx is the most interesting and absolutely avine modification, although absent as a voice-producing organ (probably due to retrogression) in most Ratitae, storks, turkey buzzards (_Cathartes_) and Steganopodes.