BIRDS OF PREY OF NOVA SCOTIA—GILPIN. 261 
cooperii), an enlarged model of the last, is very rare. I am in- 
debted to Mr. Egan for notes of one specimen mounted by him- 
self and afterwards sent home to England. I have never seen it 
myself. The goshawk (A. atricapillus) is common, and seen 
during the breeding season, though I have no notes of time. A 
pair wintered near the light-house at Digby Gut, 1889 ; but this 
is unusual. The vicinity to the sea would make one suppose 
they lived upon fish. Few hawks of any species, save eagles, 
are seen after December, even the fish hawks leave us. One 
would suppose a duck upon the water would be an easy prey for 
them, and our winter shores are covered by them; but I have 
never heard or have read of any hawk making like the fish 
hawk what may be called a water pounce. The goshawk is the 
type of the great hen hawk of the farmers’ wives. He comes 
out in the open, is not seen beating marshes like the buzzards 
and harriers, or the sea sands like the smaller faleons, but prowls 
about the homesteads, coming suddenly with the swiftness of 
the gale from nowhere, and sweeping a hen or chicken from the 
very feet of its owner, gone as suddenly as it came, and losing 
in the deadly rush for a time that caution and wariness which 
ever keeps him from the vicinity of man. The next family are 
the Falcons; a more powerful organisation comparatively; a 
keener ardor and untamed spirit; the habit of taking their 
prey with a pounce from a tall tree, or perpendicularly from the 
air, rather than hunting along the surface; a stronger, shorter, 
and peculiarly notched bill, and pointed wing, define this family 
as it were abruptly from the others. It is the type of the high- 
est excellence of the whole order. Of six species inhabiting North 
America, four are found in Nova Scotia; two probably nest- 
ing, the others rare, and as respects the jerfaleon accidental 
visiters. In F.sacer we miss the old name so long given by 
naturalists to the falcon of antiquity, but bow to the law that 
gives to the first scientific discoverer (Foster) the right of the 
specific name. Of this historical bird, the companion and pet of 
inedizval princes, the subject of the ancient pseuo science of 
hawking, with all its complex phraseology, I am indebted to Mr. 
Downs for my sole note, One specimen was mounted by him 
