APPENDIX 



THE FALCON FAMILY, INCLUDING THE HAWKS AND EAGLES 



Birds of powerful build, generally of medium or large size, with 

 strong, hooked bills, well developed feet and talons. Flight vigorous 

 and rapid ; food flesh or insectivorous. 



14. White-tailed Kite; Elanus leucurus (Vieill.). 



Length, sixteen and a half inches. Upper parts bluish gray; head, 

 tail, and lower parts white; a large black shoulder patch and another on 

 under lining of wings. Chiefly found sailing over marshy places in 

 Central California. 



15. Marsh-Hawk; Circus hudsonius (Linn.). 



Length of male about eighteen, of female twenty inches. The white 

 upper tail-coverts are a characteristic mark of this species. Male in full 

 plumage bluish gray above, generally mottled with brown; outer flight 

 feathers brownish black; tail grayish with several brown bars. Under 

 parts white, bluish on breast, spotted and barred with reddish brov^m. 

 The immature male resembles the female, more or less perfectly mottled 

 with rusty. The latter is brown, darker above, and pale below, where 

 it is streaked with reddish brown. A generally distributed and common 

 species about marshy places. 



16. Sharp-shinned Hawk; Accipiter velox (Wils.). 



A small but destructive species. Length of male eleven, of female 

 thirteen inches. In adult plumage the upper parts are dark slaty (often 

 tinged with brownish) and the under parts white, heavily barred cross- 

 wise with light reddish brown. The immature birds are dark brown 

 above and white below, streaked lengthwise with brown. Tail with dark 

 brown bars. Chiefly a winter visitant in California, although a few 

 summer in the high Sierras. 



17. Cooper's Hawk; Accipiter cooperii (Bonap.). 



Almost exactly like the preceding except for its much larger size. 

 Length of male fifteen and a half, of female nineteen inches (average). 

 It differs in adult male in having the head blackish brown, in marked 

 contrast to the slaty color of the back. Fairly common in the valleys 

 in winter, and breeding in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, where, how- 

 ever, it does not seem to be abundant. 



18. Western Goshawk; Accipiter atricapillus striatulus Ridgw. 

 Length of male twenty-two inches, of female twenty-four. Adult, 



top of head blackish brown; back deep lead color, sometimes nearly 

 black and generally tinged with brownish; lower parts white, with fine 

 irregular wavy cross-bars of slaty. A white line above and behind the 



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