56 BULLETIN 17 0, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



Dr. C. Hart Merriam (1877), referring to a duck hawk shot on an 

 island where terns were breeding, says: "During her brief visit she 

 had made sad havoc among the Terns, and her crop was greatly 

 distended with their remains, which had been swallowed in incredibly 

 large pieces — whole legs, and the long bones of the wings were found 

 entire and unbroken! Indeed she was perfectly gorged, and contained 

 the remains of at least two adult Terns, besides a mass of newly 

 hatched young!" 



Dr. Alexander Wetmore (1933) thus describes the hunting tactics 

 of the duck hawk on the Bear River marshes, Utah: 



The birds at rest perched in low willows, or on logs or bits of drift, where they 

 had clear view of the teeming bird life about them. When hungry, they dashed 

 across the open flats at high speed, striking ruthlessly at any birds that appeared, 

 from small sandpipers to large ducks. 



Their appearance in the air was always the signal for chattering cries of alarm 

 from blackbirds and avocets that put all their bird neighbors on the watch. 

 These warnings had little effect, however, as the duck hawk, killing practically 

 at will, was truly despot of this realm. 



I have seen this falcon dash through closely massed flocks of flying sandpipers, 

 striking out two or three with as many thrusts of its claws, allowing each bird to 

 drop and then wheeling swiftly to seize the falling prey in mid-air before it reached 

 the ground. Again, I have seen one in a stoop, swift almost as light, knock a 

 redhead duck to the ground, where it landed with a broken wing and other 

 injuries. 



Col. Andrew J. Grayson (1872) writes: "On a passage from Ma- 

 zatlan to San Francisco, in 1858, on the bark Carlota, one of these 

 falcons came to us, more than a hundred miles off the coast of Lower 

 California, and took up his quarters upon the main-yard, or mast- 

 head; it remained with us two days, during this time it captured at 

 least a dozen dusky petrels. It was a fine sight to see him dart head- 

 long upon these unsuspecting wanderers of the deep, seldom missing 

 his aim; he would then return to his usual resting place and partly 

 devour his prize. At other times he would let them drop in the sea, 

 after they were dead, seemingly in wanton sport." 



Mr. Hagar kept a record of the bird remains that he foimd at the 

 various aeries visited by him between March 28 and June 29, 1936; 

 there were 22 domestic pigeons, 21 blue jays, 13 flickers, 7 robins, 6 

 meadowlarks, 3 bluebirds, 2 each of red-winged blackbirds, scarlet 

 tanagers, and starlings, and 1 each of nighthawk, Baltimore oriole, 

 and bronzed grackle. 



He gives, in his notes, the following graphic description of the cap- 

 ture of a crow: "At 8.12 there appeared over the top of the mountain, 

 and certainly almost as high again in the air, a strange whirling appari- 

 tion that I was quite at loss to identify for the moment, whether bird, 

 autogyro, or space ship from Mars — a shifting tangle of flapping wings, 

 tails, necks, and whatnot. At first the progress of this flying apparatus 



