1784 



The Cornell Reading-Courses 



tures, usually nesting in a deserted flicker's hole high up in a dead stub. 

 The duck hawk and the pigeon hawk, when they do occur, frequently 

 destroy many pigeons, but the sparrow hawk feeds mostly on the larger 

 insects, meadow mice, and the smaller birds. Of 320 stomachs examined 

 by the Department of Agriculture, not one contained poultry, 215 con- 

 tained insects, 89 contained mice, and 53 contained small birds. 



Short-winged hawks, or Accipiters. — The fourth group contains the real 



poultry thieves. These 

 birds have short, rotmded 

 wings and long, narrow 

 tails. Three species are 

 found in the State, but 

 the largest, the goshawk, 

 is rare. Of the other two 

 species, the Cooper's hawk 

 is the larger, the females 

 sometimes measuring 

 nearly twenty inches in 

 length, although the males 

 are barely sixteen inches 

 long. The largest (female) 

 sharp-shinned hawks 

 never measure over four- 

 teen inches, and the males 

 measure less than twelve. 

 Both species are much 

 alike in coloration, im- 

 mature birds being brown 

 above and white below 

 with longitudinal streaks 

 of dark brown. Old birds are slaty gray above and below white, heavily 

 barred with brown. In addition to its larger size, the Cooper's hawk 

 differs from the sharp-shinned in having a roiuided tail, that of the sharp- 

 shinned being square. 



Both birds frequent woodlands rather than open country, and are 

 seldom seen soaring high in the air. They dart through the thickets or 

 skim low over the ground in search of their prey, or come to rest on a low 

 branch of a tree. The sharp-shinned hawk, because of its small size, 

 attacks mostly the smaller chickens, but the Cooper's hawk is able to 

 carry off nearly full-grown fowls. Because of their elusive ways, a poultry 

 owner may often hear commotion in the poultry yard and miss many a 

 fine fowl before he gets even a glimpse of the culprit; and many an inno- 

 cent, but more conspicuous, hawk of the broad-winged species has come 



PHOTOGRAPHED BY G. A. BAILEY 



Fig. 15. — The sparrow hawk with house sparroiu 



