BIRDS OF MINNESOTA. 183 



its life or death depends upon the distances between the trees 

 through which it is escaping, for while the Hawk may fly the 

 swifter, the Grouse employs the trees for coverts successively 

 most ingeniously, until in a moment of seclusion it will drop 

 into the brush and dry leaves so suddenly, and remain so mo- 

 tionless as to elude the eye of its adversary completely. 



Many of my correspondents in various sections of the State 

 have reported the presence of this species. 



SPECIFIC CHARACTERS. 



Head above a brownish-black, mixed with white on the occi- 

 put, other parts dark ashy-brown, with the shafts of the 

 feathers brownish-black; an obscure rufous collar on the neck 

 behind; throat and under tail coverts white, the former with 

 lines of dark brown, other under parts transversely barred 

 with light rufous and white; quills ashy-brown, with darker 

 bands and white irregular markings on their inner webs; tail 

 dark cinereous, tipped with white, and with four wide bands of 

 brownish-black. 



Length (female), 18 to 20; wing, 10 to 11; tail, 8.50. 



Habitat, North America. 



ACCIPITER ATRICAPILLUS (Wilson). (334.) 

 AMERICAN GOSHAWK. 



I have no positive evidence that this hawk breeds in Minne- 

 sota, yet I believe it does to some extent. It is a winter visit- 

 ant in all the middle and southern counties, that arrives here 

 about the first of January. In the milder winters it often fails 

 to come at all, and it returns northward very early in the 

 spring. The first individual that came into my hands here, 

 was a mature male that was taken by a farmer in his barn in 

 February in the act of capturing a hen which it had followed 

 in. The hawk was alive, uninjured and in good winter plum- 

 age, but he would not eat in captivity, and Tannerized himself 

 into a martyr to science. 



In all, I have obtained half a dozen in various plumages, 

 mostly that of the young of the previous year. They leave 

 our latitude mostly in March. It is a beautiful species, not 

 easily forgotten after having been in the hands once, on 

 account of the delicacy of the markings of the feathers. The 

 flight, once observed, is so characteristic that the bird may be 

 quite reliably identified by it alone. I have never seen them 

 moving in circles, but in very direct lines; often high in the air 

 on cold days, but when hunting for Ruffed Grouse, Prairie Chick- 

 ens, and rabbits, all of which it will seize with the bearing of 

 a monarch of the wing, it flies comparatively low, but none the 



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