142 BULLETIN 16 7, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



imbedded under the skin, showing that she had been hit the first time I fired. 

 This, though, was not sufficient to cause her to leave without her intended 

 victim, notwithstanding the fact that she saw me plainly enough the second, if 

 not the first time. When its appetite for blood is once excited, the Goshawk is 

 certainly devoid of all fear and discretion as well, while under ordinary cir- 

 cumstances there is no shyer bird to circumvent and bring to bag. 



PARABUTEO UNICINCTUS HARRISI (Audubon) 

 HARRIS'S HAWK 



IIABITS 



Only along our southwestern borders may we expect to find this 

 conspicuously marked hawk. In southern Texas it is a common 

 bird, in Arizona less so, frequenting the prairie regions, the chapar- 

 ral, and the mesquite lands. Its range extends southward through 

 Mexico. It is replaced in South America by a closely allied race. 

 Audubon's type specimen was taken in Louisiana, but it is a rare 

 bird there. Mrs. Florence M. Bailey (1903) Avrites of its haunts: 



Fifteen miles west of Corpus Christi, Petranilla Creek throws a belt of rich 

 vegetation across the prairie. Its walls are crowned with elms and live oaks 

 whose serried branches are hung with waving gray moss, while encircling a 

 floor massed with pink primroses grow a mixture of Mexican and United States 

 trees and bushes — hackberry, ash, palmetto, all-thorns and cactus. Birds and 

 mammals naturally flock here and also show southern admixtures, the clay 

 banks of the creek being tracked up by coon, coyote, wild cat, and armadillo, 

 while in April and May the trees are alive with such birds as the cuckoo, chat, 

 wren, wood pewee, kingbird, cardinal, and a variety of warblers including the 

 blackburnian, together with the golden-fronted woodpecker and nonpariel. 



Nesting. — Mrs. Bailey (1928) sums up the nesting habits very 

 well as follows : "A compactly made platform of sticks, twigs, weeds, 

 and roots lined with green mesquite, elm shoots, and leaves, grass, 

 bark, Spanish moss, and roots, placed in cactus, Spanish bayonet, 

 chaparral, mesquite, hackberry, and other trees." 



The only nest I ever saw was shown to us by a Mexican, near 

 Brownsville, Tex., on May 24, 1923. It was only about 10 feet from 

 the ground in a large, branching pricklypear cactus, in an extensive 

 tract of dense chaparral. It had contained young but was then 

 empty. The nest had been partially pulled down and the young 

 killed, perhaps by a coyote or wild cat, both of which were common 

 there. 



George Finlay Simmons (1925) says that in Texas the nests range 

 in height from 10 to 30 feet above ground, "in top limbs of chaparral 

 bush or low tree (mesquite, elm, hackberry or blackjack) on prairie." 



George B, Sennett (1879) mentions, among several nests, "one 25 

 feet high in an ebony tree, the other 20 feet high in a mesquite." 

 Dr. James C. Merrill (1879) found a nest, near Brownsville, placed 

 on the top of a Spanish bayonet some 8 or 9 feet above the ground. 



