132 BULLETIN 16 7, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



destruction of Mallards, Teals, Black Ducks, and other species, iu company 

 with the Peregrine Falcon. * * • 



I saw one abandoning its course, to give chase to a large flock of Crow 

 Blackbirds (Quiscolus versicolor), then crossing the river. The Hawk ap- 

 proached them with the swiftness of an arrow, when the Blackbirds rushed 

 together so closely that the flock looked like a dusky ball passing through the 

 air. On reaching the mass, he, with the greatest ease, seized first one, then 

 another, and another, giving each a squeeze with his talons, and suffering it 

 to drop upon the water. In this manner, he had procured four or five before 

 the poor birds reached the woods, into which they instantly plunged, when 

 he gave up the chase, swept over the water in graceful curves, and picked up 

 the fruits of his industry, carrying each bird singly to the shore. 



W. E. Cram (1899) describes an interesting method of hunting; 

 he followed tracks of a hawk through the woods on the snow; it 

 walked much like a crow, but hopped for a few feet occasionally. 



At times it followed in the tracks of rabbits for some distance. I have often 

 known them to do this, and am inclined to think that they occasionally hunt 

 rabbits in this manner where the under-brush is too dense to allow them to 

 fly through it easily. I have sometimes followed their tracks through the 

 brush until I came upon the remains of freshly killed rabbits which they 

 had been eating. 



E. S. Cameron (1907) says that a goshawk caught several of his 

 fowls, and — 



as the captured fowls weighed upwards of five pounds each it could not 

 carry them off but ate the back or breast of its victims where they lay. A 

 few days after the white hen episode the Goshawk killed a very fine cockerel 

 and was observed by me almost in the act To escape its enemy the terrified 

 fowl had run under some young cedars which would have saved it from a 

 Prairie Falcon or Peregrine, but were no protection against the relentless 

 Goshawk which followed and seized its prey within the cover. So great was 

 the strength of this cockerel that it ran an uphill distance of fifteen paces 

 towards the fowl house, burdened with the clinging hawk, ere it fell dead. 

 The Goshawk kills its prey by constriction of the feet, and it is quite certain 

 that the squeeze combined with the shock is rapidly fatal to fowls. 



Prof. R. T. Fisher, director of the Harvard Forest, told me that 

 he rather liked to have the goshawks about "because they eat great 

 quantities of red squirrels", which are injurious to the pine trees in 

 the forest. I believe that these and other rodents, all more or less 

 injurious to wild and cultivated trees and to the eggs and young 

 of small birds, form a very large portion of the food of these hawks. 



Robie W. Tufts, who has had extensive experience with nesting 

 goshawks in Nova Scotia, writes to me : 



I spent some time about a nest of this species last spring and made the 

 following notes concerning their food : Chipmunks, 3 ; half-grown rabbit, 1 ; 

 female hairy woodpecker, 1 ; ruffed grouse, 1 chick and 2 adult birds. The 

 chipmunks invariably had their heads off, and I have on numerous other 

 occasions seen chipmunks in the nests of this species and always decapitated. 

 The nest that I had under observation intermittently last spring was near 

 two large farms. One of these boasts of a poultry yard of no mean propor- 



