WESTERN RED-TAILED HAWK 171 



while the young ones circle, squalling, below her. Then she drops 

 the food, and the young birds catch it before it reaches the ground. 

 Snakes are a favorite article of diet, and when dropped in this way 

 are easily seen." 



Plumages. — The downy stage and the sequence of plumages and 

 molts are the same as in the eastern red-tailed hawk. Therefore it is 

 necessary to consider here only the interesting color phases that seem 

 to occur only in these western birds. In the extreme melanistic phase 

 the entire adult plumage, except the tail, is very dark brown, varying 

 from "bone brown" above to "w^arm sepia" or "bister" below ; the tail 

 varies from "Sanford's brown" to "hazel", a deep rich red, with a 

 broad subterminal band and numerous more or less broken bars of 

 black. In a common variation from the above the breast and belly 

 are more or less tinged with tawny or rufous shades and the tibiae 

 are spotted or barred with these colors. The erythristic, or red, 

 phases are quite variable. An extremely red adult has "tawny" 

 edgings on the head and neck; the scapulars are notched with buffy 

 shades; the entire under parts from chin to tail are rich reddish 

 brown, varying from bright "hazel" or "cinnamon-rufous" on the 

 breast to "amber brown" on the tibiae; the upper breast is lightly 

 streaked and the belly heavily spotted with black; the tibiae are 

 faintly barred with a darker brown ; the tail is much as in the black 

 phase but slightly paler. Intermediates between these two phases 

 have duller, sootier browns on the under parts, the breast and belly 

 showing two quite distinct colors. There are also intermediates 

 between both of these phases and the common light phase. Imma- 

 ture birds of the dark phase are much darker above and much more 

 heavily marked below' than in the light phase. They look very much 

 like young hariani., but can be recognized by the scarcity or almost 

 complete absence of the conspicuous white spots on the upper parts 

 so prominent in harlani. 



I am not sure that we can recognize the young of the red phase, 

 though we might expect them to show richer buff or tawnier shades. 



Food. — The feeding habits of the western redtail are similar to 

 those of the eastern bird, but the western form is even more bene- 

 ficial to the agriculturalist, for it lives in a region where injurious 

 rodents are very abundant and troublesome. Joseph Dixon (1906) 

 says: "Each jDair of hawks had its own squirrel pasture and the 

 birds resented the trespassing of other hawks on their domain. The 

 remains of gophers, ground squirrels, meadow mice, young cotton- 

 tails and two species of snakes, the striped racer and gopher snake, 

 were found in red-tails' nests, but ground squirrels seemed to be 

 their principal diet. I found as many species of small mammals 



