280 BULLETIN 16 7, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



(1928b). They shot a roughleg and found that the right tarsus and 

 foot had been lost, possibly in a pole trap, some time previous. 



The curious and pathetic point was that the head and neck, that is. all such 

 parts as could not be reached by the bill, were literally swarming with lice, 

 sometimes to the extent of dozens to the square centimeter. These had devoured 

 all the softer, concealed parts of the head and neck feathers, so that while the 

 rest of the body, which was quite free from vermin, was so densely coated with 

 white under-plumage that it was very difficult to reveal even the principal 

 inter-tract spaces, the bare skin of the infested areas was merely shingled over 

 by the tips of the contour feathers. ♦ ♦ * The hawk had been able to strike 

 its prey with one foot, but was being literally tormented to death, and de- 

 prived of its protection against the bitter cold, by the tragic circumstance of 

 being unable to scratch its head ! 



Lucien M. Turner wrote that where the nest of this hawk is easily 

 accessible, it "was often a matter of wonder to me how they escaped 

 the ravages of foxes and other prowlers." Eternal watchfulness on 

 the part of the hawks must be necessary, and few foxes, I imagine, 

 would stand a determined onslaught by these birds. 



The chief enemy of the rough-legged hawk is man. If the farmer 

 and the gunner could be brought to look on this hawk in the same 

 way that the ornithologist views him as a beneficent agent in the 

 balance of nature, rodent pests would be much diminished and the 

 nature lover would more frequently enjoy the spectacle of this 

 splendid bird quartering the fields and soaring aloft. Owing to the 

 generally unsuspicious character of the roughleg, its leisurely flight, 

 and its large size, the average gunner is often enabled to shoot it, 

 without the exercise of much skill, and at times of migration in 

 numbers the slaughter is sometimes appalling, as has been stated 

 above in the Toronto flight shooting. 



William Brewster (1925) describes this ignoble and disastrous 

 "sport" of shooting rough-legged hawks. He says the Connecticut 

 River Valley "used to be one of its principal routes of migration 

 through Massachusetts", and continues : 



At Northampton, in the latter state, lived two gunners fond of shooting 

 Hawks and very expert at it, who sometimes killed as many as twenty Rough- 

 legs in the course of a single day. They began to hunt them systematically 

 in 1879, and continued to bag them numerously up to 1887 or 1888, but were 

 forced to discontinue the unworthy if exciting sport about 1890, because then 

 and thereafter there were very fev/ if any of the birds to be found in the 

 neighborhood of Northampton, almost all having been apparently slain or driven 

 to seek other haunts. The gunners commonly hunted them in an open buggy 

 or "stone boat," drawn by a well-trained horse over smooth, grassy, interval 

 lands bordering on the River, and shot at them mostly on wing as they flew 

 from the tops of tall, isolated trees, chiefly elms, in which they were accus- 

 tomed to perch. When approached in this manner they seldom left the tree, 

 until the horse was stopped within gunshot of it. If he kept on past it they 

 were unlikely to fly at all. Yet it was impossible for a man to get near them on 

 foot in such open ground. All this was demonstrated to me on March 17, 1881, 



