98 THE RED-TAILED HAWK. 



brown, with the wings, excepting tips of primaries, finely 

 but irregularly barred with ashy-brown and whitish. The 

 tail is mottled with ashy-brown, which becomes decidedly 

 rufous next to the shaft of the subterminal portion of the 

 feathers. Below, the feathers of the flanks and under the 

 tail coverts are obscurely banded with ashy-brown. The 

 basal two-thirds of the feathers on head, neck, all around, 

 and breast to middle of body, are pure white." {Maynard). 



This fine bird was first found in Louisiana by Audubon. 

 ' As none were found for many years afterward, its validity 

 as a species was doubted. More recently some half-dozen 

 specimens have been found, some as far north as Pennsyl- 

 vania, but more of them in Texas. It is now regarded as 

 a well-defined species. 



The Red-shouldered Hawk {Biiteo lineatus) — male, some 

 19.00 long; female, 22.00 — is nearly as long as the former 

 species to which it is very closely related, but it is not nearly 

 as heavy. Reddish-brown above the feathers, dark-centered, 

 lighter shade of the same below, with narrow streaks of 

 darker and bars of white, the blackish tail noticeably banded 

 with white, shoulder of the wing orange-brown. Young, 

 plain brown above, white below dark-streaked. This species 

 is every way similar in habit to the Red-tail. Very abund- 

 ant along the Atlantic Coast and in the Atlantic States 

 generally, it becomes rare already in the Maritime prov- 

 inces, and is not common to the westward. It is either rare 

 or overlooked in Western New York. 



Swainson's Hawk (Biiteo swainsoni), a northwestern species, 

 breeding rarely in Illinois, and straggling to Montreal and 

 Massachusetts, must be noticed here. The 7?iale, some 19.50 

 long, and 48.00 in extent, is dark-brown above, lighter on 

 head, darker on wings, and ashy on tail, the feathers, 

 especially on neck, more or less edged with reddish. Wings 



