NORTHERN RED-SHOULDERED HAWK 191 



Adults have a complete annual molt, beginning sometimes in April 

 and in some cases not completed until October. Molting birds are 

 very scarce in collections, probably because these hawks seek the 

 seclusion of the woods during summer. We have often remarked 

 that, although we could find from 20 to 30 breeding pairs during 

 any spring, I could almost count on the fingers of one hand all I 

 have ever seen in summer. 



Food. — The red-shouldered hawk is one of our most beneficial and 

 least harmful hawks. It certainly does not deserve its common name, 

 "hen hawk"; Dr. A. K. Fisher (1893) found that its diet consisted 

 of 65 percent small rodents and only 2 percent poultry. Its diet is 

 most varied, as it includes mammals, birds, snakes, frogs, fish, in- 

 sects, centipedes, spiders, ci'awfish, earthworms, and snails, 11 classes 

 of animal life. Of 220 stomachs examined by the Biological Survey, 

 3 contained poultry; 12, other birds; 102, mice; 40, other mammals; 

 20, reptiles; 39, batrachians; 92, insects; 16, spiders; 7, crawfish; 3, 

 fish; 2, offal; and 1, earthworms. Dr. B. H. Warren (1890) says: 

 "In my examinations of fifty-seven of these Hawks which have been 

 captured in Pennsylvania, forty-three showed field mice, some few 

 other small quadrupeds, grasshoppers, and insects, mostly beetles; 

 nine revealed frogs and insects; two, small birds, remains of small 

 mammals, and a few beetles ; two, snakes and portions of frogs." 



Dr. Fisher (1893) quotes J. Alden Loring as saying: "The pair 

 reared their young for two years in a small swampy piece of woods 

 about 50 rods from a poultry farm containing 800 young chickens 

 and 400 ducks, and the keeper told me he had never seen the hawks 

 attempt to catch one." 



The mammal food recorded includes mice of various kinds, shrews, 

 moles, squirrels, chipmunks, rabbits, muskrats, opossums, and 

 skunks. Birds are not so often taken, but the list includes sora rail, 

 pheasant, bobwhite, chickens, mourning dove, vvoodcock, screech owl, 

 sparrow hawk, flicker, crow, blackbirds, meadowlark, robin, and 

 various sparrows. Other items are lizards, toads, various frogs, 

 salamanders, turtles, grasshoppers, crickets, mole crickets, beetles, 

 wasps, katydid, cicada, spiders, centipedes, earthworms, snails, and 

 various lepidopterous larvae. Two of these hawks, said to have been 

 destroying birds, were brought to Prof. J. E. Guthrie, of Ames, 

 Iowa; he says (1931) : "I found in the stomach of one, a striped 

 ground squirrel, a young rabbit, and twenty-four full grown grass- 

 hoppers. The other one's stomach was completely filled with our 

 largest common species of grasshoppers, and one that perhaps has 

 been doing the most damage of any in the central states this year. I 

 identified the remains of forty-nine specimens. It is of interest to 

 know that we have these helpers with us this summer when they are 

 so much needed." 



