228 NORTH AMERICAN BIRDS. 



and pounces vipon the object of its pursuit so suddenly as to render hope- 

 less any attempt to escape. It has frequently been known to seize and kill 

 a bird so large that it was unable to carry it, and had to drop to the ground 

 with it. In one instance Mr. Audubon saw it strike a Brown Thrush, which 

 it had darted into a thicket of briers to seize, emerging at the opposite side. 

 As Mr. Audubon ran up, the Hawk attempted twice to rise with its prey, 

 but was nnable to carry it off', and relinquished it. The Thrush was quite 

 dead, and had evidently been killed instantly. 



Mr. Downes, of Halifax, Mdio speaks of this Hawk as common in Nova 

 Scotia, breeding all over that province, adds that it does not molest the 

 poultry-yards, being too weak to attack large prey. But this is not univer- 

 sally the case. They are frequently destructive both to dove-cots and to the 

 younger inhabitants of the poultry-yard. Mr. Nuttall narrates that in the 

 thinly settled parts of Alabama and Georgia it seemed to abound, and was 

 very destructive to young chickens, a single one having been known to come 

 regularly every day until it had carried off twenty or thirty. He was eye- 

 witness to one of its acts of robbery, where, at noonday and in the near 

 presence of the farmer, the Hawk descended and carried off" one of the 

 chickens. In another instance the same writer mentions that one of these 

 Hawks, descending with blind eagerness upon its prey, broke through the 

 glass of the greenhouse at the Cambridge Botanic Garden, fearlessly 

 passed through a second glass partition, and was only brought up by a 

 third, when it was caught, though very little injured. 



At times this Hawk is seen to fly high, in a desultory manner, with quick 

 but irregular movements of the wings, now moving in short and unequal 

 circles, pausing to examine the objects below, and then again descending 

 rapidly and following a course only a few feet from the ground, carefully 

 examining each patch of small bushes in search of small birds. 



Besides the smaller birds, young chickens, and pigeons, this Hawk has 

 been known to occasionally feed on small reptiles and insects, as also upon 

 the smaller quadrupeds. 



Mr. Audubon speaks of having met with three nests of this species, and 

 all in differfmt situations. One was in a hole in a rock on the banks of the 

 Ohio Eiver ; another was in the hollow of a broken branch, near Louisville, 

 Ky., and the third in the forks of a low oak, near Henderson, Ky. In the 

 first case, the nest was slight, and simply constructed of a few sticks and 

 some grasses, carelessly interwoven, and about two feet from the entrance of 

 the hole. In the second instance there was no nest whatever, but in the 

 third the birds were engaged in the construction of an elaborate nest. The 

 number of the eggs was four in one instance, and five in another. He describes 

 them as almost equally rounded at both ends ; their ground-color white, with 

 a livid tinge, but scarcely discernible amid the numerous markings and 

 blotches of reddish-chocolate with which they were irregularly covered. In 

 a nest which was large and elaborately constructed of sticks, and contained 



