54 The Ottawa Naturalist. |June 



the hawk. I have sometimes given it more mice at one time than 

 it could eat in a day. One day it ate ten, but the next day it did 

 not seem very anxious for food. When I hold a mouse near the 

 box, it makes quite a fuss, and, if I throw the mouse at the hawk, 

 it springs from its perch and never fails to catch the mouse in the 

 air with its talons before it touches the floor. 



When I captured the hawk, it was evidently in the first year's 

 plumage. Its general colour above was dark brown ; below, its 

 feathers were whitish, with longitudinal brown-pencilled markings. 

 The tail was barred with whitish. It moulted this summer, and 

 its new feathers came in of a different colour, x^bove, it is a 

 reddish-brown, with the centre of the feathers darker than the out- 

 side. The bend of the wing has assumed an orange-brown tinge, 

 and the barring of the tail is brighter coloured. The breast and 

 lower parts are light reddish-brown with whitish barring. 



At night, when it is sleeping, it takes a queer position. It 

 curls its neck around and hides its head in the long feathers of its 

 neck. One has to look closely at it to see the least sign of a head. 

 Its appetite varies much with the seasons. In winter a fast of 

 three or four days is not always sufficient even to provoke even a 

 fairly good appetite, and a week's fast does not make it so hungry 

 as a fast of two days in summer time. 



I have often watched it in the act of ejecting a pellet of fur, 

 feathers and bones, which is the habit of the Raptores in general. 

 After undergoing several of those contortions of the back which 

 afflict a human being in the act of vomiting, it shakes its head 

 violently, and the pellet, on leaving its mouth, is often thrown 

 many feet to one side. The pellets vary in size from i to i ^ 

 inches in length and are usually about twice as long as they are 

 thick. The ends of the pellets are generally somewhat rounded, 

 but sometimes they have quite a sharp point. Those I have ex- 

 amined particularly, consist of a number of wads of about ^ inch 

 in thickness, and, when the hawk has been fed solely on mice, 

 they have usually contained nothing but fur and a fe v small 

 bones, sometimes so small that they are hard to find. 



