586 OUNITUOLOGY. 



notes of B. UneatHS, but less loud niid more monotonous. Three d;iys 

 afterward this family was again met with, and the three remaining young 

 immediately secured; but the parent birds were not so easily killed, foi-, 

 although they received several charges of dust shot, as they courageously 

 flew about us, they were far tougher than their yoiing. The female was 

 brought down first, when the male only increased in courage and clamor, 

 until lie, too, was killed. 



On llie Truckee lvcservati(m a nest of this .species was fotuid in a 

 lai-ge cotton-wood tree, and the female (No. 771) sliot from it. This nest 

 was l)uiU near the extremity of a large drooping branch, and was conse- 

 quently inaccessible; by climbing above it, however, the eggs, two in num- 

 ber, could be seen, but it was found impossible, under the circumstances, 

 to secure them. ^Many other nests were discovered in this locality, but 

 they were in the ordinary position, viz, in a fork of a tall tree. In Parley's 

 Park, on the AVahsatch Mountains, Swainson's Hawk was connnon, and 

 many nests were found among the scrub-oaks on the slopes or on small 

 aspens on the sides of the ravines. Their position was always low down, 

 often merely a few feet from the ground, and cnisily reached without clindj- 

 ing. In one of these nests, found July 2d, was a single young one, 

 whicli, ahhough yet covered with snow-white cottony down, was savagely 

 tearing at a dead weasel which had been carried to the nest by the old 

 birds, both of which were killed; of these, the male is a remarkably light- 

 colored example, the entire lower parts, including the under side of the 

 wing.s, being pure white, the breast covered by a broad patch of uniform 

 cinnamon-rufous, while the female, on the other hand, is one of the darkest 

 examples of the species we ever saw, being of a uniform sooty-black, only 

 the under tail coverts l)eing sliglitly barred with whitish. 



The food of this llawk is })j no means contiued to small mannnals 

 and birds, but during the flights of the grasshoppers, which so often devas- 

 tate the fields of Utah and other portions of the West, they keep continu- 

 ally gorged on these insects; and at one season we found them living 

 chiefly on the large cricket so common in the Salt Lake Valley. On tlio 

 31st of May, 18G9, at Salt Lake City, we noticed a nnnd)er of these Hawks 

 on the ground, where they remained most of the time (piiet, but every now 



