98 The Wilson Buli.etix— No. 67. 



outside preparing some birds for our drive to the station that 

 afternoon, when I noticed a Hawk at a considerable distance 

 and very high. After a few moments others began to arrive. 

 They kept coming until there were about twenty-six in sight 

 at once and the resemblance between their methods and those 

 of the Broad-wing was very striking. As they reached the 

 location where the leader had d.^sen to circle each one spread 

 his tail as does the Broad-wing, and joined the circling band. 

 This continued until the Hawks got so numerous that I had 

 thirteen at once in the field of my glass. They were., I -hould 

 say, half a mile high, so distant that it was almost impossible 

 to say whether they were Red-tails or Rough-legs. At inter- 

 vals one heard the Red-tail call, but I am not one that can 

 distinguish between the cry of these two birds. After awhile 

 they began to straggle off towards the south but the day was 

 pleasant and those circling apparently disliked to leave the 

 Point. Doubtless, they could readily see the Ohio shore and 

 the Islands between, and they were certainly not, as many 

 others, birds who seem to fear the flight over the water, but 

 the main body so persistently refused to leave their play- 

 ground that after awhile others came drifting back from the 

 south and joined them once more, and it was on some of 

 these travelers that I had the opportunity of deciding defin- 

 itely that they were Rough-legs and not Red-tails. 



Of course the probabilities all pointed to Rough-legs. We 

 had seen Red-tails in numbers before, but never acting like this. 

 [Moreover, on that particular day more Rough-legs had been 

 seen, prior to this circling band, than Red-tails, so that I was 

 confident that when an opportunity occurred to make their 

 identity positive, the verdict would be Rough-legs. The re- 

 sults of several such opportunities were alike, each one prov- 

 ing as I had expected to be a Rough-legged Hawk, so that 

 I had no hesitation in deciding that these strange acting 

 hawks were all of that species. On this day we saw about 

 40, a number approximately equal to all that I had ever seen 

 in Ontario before and the finding of such a large number was 

 very unexpected, but Point Pelee is a place that demonstrates 



