400 THE SHARP-SHINNED HAWK. 
Incubation is accomplished in about three weeks, or if it has commenced 
with the laying of the first egg, as is often the case, then the last egg may not 
hatch for a week longer. While the female is brooding the young, she is 
frequently fed by the mate from a considerable height. Dr. Lynds Jones 
relates one such instance in which an element of sportiveness appeared to enter 
in: “Once during the breeding season I saw a male catch a large garter snake 
and fly up with it several hundred feet, then drop it to the female who just 
then came flying along near the ground. She caught it and carried it to the 
nest followed by the male.” 
The young, after leaving the nest, hunt for several months with their 
parents, and the last and costliest lesson which they learn is fear of man. If 
these most excellent mousers had half the gratitude shown to them which we 
manifest toward cats, they might be abundant where they are now rare. 
Without question the past twenty years has shown a marked decrease in the 
abundance of this species in Washington. The Marsh Hawk is partially and 
irregularly migratory, but it is now seldom seen hereabouts in winter, whereas 
Cooper described it as “abundant thruout the open districts of the Territory 
especially in winter.” 
No. 201. 
SHARP-SHINNED HAWK. 
A. O. U. No. 332. Accipiter velox (Wils.). 
Synonyms.—"Sparrow” Hawk. Birp Hawk. 
Description.—Adult: Above slaty gray, dark plumbeous, or chocolate- 
brown, with a glaucous cast, darker but not black on head; occipital feathers, 
scapulars, and inner quills with concealed white at base; primaries banded with 
two shades of fuscous above, contrasting dusky and whitish below; tail, nearly 
square, slightly emarginate, crossed by five dusky bands, and narrowly whitish at 
tip, the basal band concealed and nearly obsolete; auriculars rusty, with black 
shaft-lines; throat whitish or pale buffy with blackish shafts; remaining under- 
parts white, heavily barred on breast, belly, sides, axillaries, and shanks with 
pale cinnamon-rufous,—feathers of breast with blackish shaft-lines; lining of 
wings rusty-tinged, finely and irregularly barred with dusky; crissum unmarked, 
or merely touched with rufous; iris, cere, and feet yellow; bill and claws black- 
ish. Females are perhaps less blue above, and duller or paler below. /mmature: 
Above dusky brown margined with rufous, concealed white cropping out in 
streaks on forehead and hind-neck, and in spots on scapulars, ete. ; below streaked 
and spotted instead of barred, with pale browns ( Vandyke brown, Prout’s brown, 
ete.) and dusky, narrowly on cheeks and throat, more broadly on breast and 
sides—markings pandurate on sides of breast, cordate, tear-shaped, or various 
below, sometimes transverse on flanks and shanks. Between this and the typical 
adult plumage every gradation exists. Rather variable in size,—adult male, 
