74 Contributions from the Charleston Museum, 



grounds, and it is a curious fact that each bird has a certain terri- 

 tory in which it appears to hunt exclusively. A perfect albino 

 of this hawk made its appearance every winter from 1901 to 1905, 

 on Dewees Island, but despite all my exertions I was unable to 

 capture it. It arrived each year in November or December and 

 departed sometime in March. The food of the Red-tailed Hawk 

 is chiefly mice and other larger mammals. It sometimes eats 

 poultry and game birds, but is considered a beneficial species to 

 the agriculturist. 



The Red-tail Hawk breeds in the interior of the State. 



139. Buteo lineatusalleni Ridgw. Florida Red-shouldered 

 Hawk. 



This form is a permanent resident and breeds locally along the 

 coast from the vicinity of Charleston to the Savannah River. The 

 birds mate in February and the nests are sometimes being built 

 in the same month, but as a rule they are commenced early in 

 March. The nests are usually built in large pine trees in swampy 

 woods, and are composed of sticks, bark-strippings, weeds, and 

 Spanish moss. The birds sometimes return to the same nest for 

 a number of years to breed, and each year it is augmented until 

 it attains a large size. This hawk lays from two to four eggs, 

 generally two, rarely three, while four are exceptional. I have 

 taken four eggs but once — on April 4, 1896. The earliest set 

 taken was on March 14, 1899, and consisted of three shghtly incu- 

 bated eggs. The eggs are white or bluish white, spotted and some- 

 times very heavily blotched with reddish brown and lilac. Some 

 specimens are entirely unmarked, and these are sometimes found 

 in nests which contain heavily spotted eggs. The eggs measure 

 2.00X1.70. 



During the breeding season this hawk frequently catches chick- 

 ens and even grown fowls, but its principal food is mice, frogs, 

 and snakes. It is very fond of water-snakes and will sit on a dead 

 tree by a pond of water for hours waiting to prey upon them . This 

 is the commonest of all the hawks found on this coast, and al- 

 most every plantation contains from one to four pairs, which 

 return annually to the same locality to breed. On April 4, 1899, 

 I obtained two eggs of this hawk from a nest 60 feet from the 

 ground, in a dead pine. This is the first instance I know of 

 this bird breeding in a dead tree. 



