AMERICAN ROUGH-LEGGED HAWK 269 



plagiata has the most extensive range occurring from southern 

 Arizona and southern Texas south to Guatemala. 



While generally nonmigratory, A. p. plagiata generally withdraws 

 entirely from the United States during the winter season. It is then 

 found north regularly to Sinaloa (Mazatlan and Escuinapa) ; Puebla 

 (Chietla) ; and Yucatan (Chable, Merida, and Espita). 



Early dates of spring arrival in Arizona are : Huachuca 

 Mountains, March 31 ; and Tucson, April 4. 



Casual records. — The species has been recorded from Illinois (Fox 

 Prairie, August 17, 1871) and from Iowa (Van Buren County, May 

 25, 1895), but neither of these records is considered satisfactory. A 

 winter specimen was collected at Brownsville, Tex., on December 5, 

 1885, and identified at the Biological Survey. 



Egg dates. — Arizona and Mexico : 48 records, March 16 to July 2 ; 

 24 records, April 19 to May 31. 



BUTEO LAGOPUS S. JOHANNIS (Gmelin) 

 AMERICAN ROUGH-LEGGED HAWK 



HABITS 



Contributed by Charles Wendeill Townsend 



To anyone who has been to the summer home of the rough-legged 

 hawk in the North, or has seen it in its winter migrations, the men- 

 tion of its name brings up visions of a splendid bird, one of the 

 largest and finest of our hawks. Past master in the use of air cur- 

 rents, whether it is poised motionless in a breeze over a cliff, or 

 scaling close to the ground and quartering it like a harrier, or 

 swinging proudly in great circles up and up into the blue slry^, this 

 great hawk is always a thing of joy and beauty. Limited in its diet 

 almost exclusively to rodent pests, and therefore of the greater value 

 to the agriculturalist, this hawk is still pursued by man with his 

 keen and cruel hunter instincts and his unreasoning prejudice 

 against all hawks. Where a Japanese cabinetmaker would take his 

 block and rapidly sketch the graceful poises of a hawk, the western 

 barbarian takes his gun and kills and hardly glances at his beautiful 

 and blood-stained victim, as he leaves it where it has fallen. 



As a consequence, this magnificent and most beneficent of hawks 

 has been growing scarcer in the past 60 years or more, not only in its 

 breeding range but in its winter flights into the United States. 



Spring. — As the smaller rodents constitute the chief food supply 

 of the rough-legged hawk, the northerly migration of this bird in the 

 spring follows the retreating snow, for not until the snow melts are 

 the runways of meadow mice revealed. In eastern Massachusetts 

 it goes north in the latter part of April and early in May; May 14 

 is my latest date. On several occasions in April and May I have 



