Kites, Hawks, Eagles, etc. 



gray, barred with blackish, and with a whitish tip ; throat 

 white, streal<ed with blackish. Other under parts whitish, 

 barred on sides and breast with rusty, buff, and brown, 

 lining of wings white, spotted with dusky; head small; 

 tarsus slender and feathered half way ; feet slender. Imma- 

 ture birds have dusky upper parts, margined with rufous; 

 tail resembling adults'. Under parts buffer whitish, streaked 

 or spotted with rusty or blackish. 



Jiange — North America in general; nesting throughout the United 

 States and wintering from Massachusetts to Guatemala. 



Season — Permanent resident, except at northern parts of range. 



A smaller edition of Cooper's hawk (to be distinguished 

 from it chiefly by its square, instead of rounded, tail), like it, 

 dashes through the air with a speed and audacity that spread 

 consternation among the little song and game birds and poultry, 

 once it appears, like a flash of "feathered lightning," in their 

 midst. Cries of terror from many sympathizers when a spar- 

 row, a goldfinch, a warbler, or some tiny victim is making 

 desperate efforts to escape, first attract one's notice; but of what 

 avail are the stones hurled after a hawk that swoops and dodges, 

 twists and turns, in imitation of every movement of the panic 

 stricken bird he presses after, closer and closer, until, at the end 

 of a long chase, when it is exhausted and almost worried to 

 death, he strikes it with talons so sharp and long that they 

 penetrate to the very vitals ? Now alighting on the ground, 

 he rends the warm flesh from its bones with a beak as savage as 

 the talons. If the little bird had but known enough to remain 

 in the thicket! A race for life in the open seems to give the 

 pursuing villain a fiendish satisfaction : let his little prey but 

 dash toward the woods, where he knows as well as it does that 

 it is safe, and one fell swoop cuts the journey short. There can 

 be little said in praise of a marauder that boldly enters the 

 poultry yard and devours dozens of chicks, attacks and worsts 

 game birds quite as large as itself and that eats very few mice 

 and insects and an overwhelming proportion of birds of the 

 greatest value and charm. The so called "hen-hawks" and 

 "chicken-hawks" — much slandered birds — do not begin to be 

 so destructive as this little reprobate that, like its larger proto- 

 type and the equally villainous goshawk, too often escape the 

 charge of shot they so richly deserve. 



313 



