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508 THE SWAINSON HAWK. 
of sticks occupied .a niche about half way up the face of an eighty-foot wall, 
Upon our approach the widowed bird dashed at us with angry cries, but as 
soon as we came near enough to mark the three hawklets, little downy, white 
fellows a week or so old, he mounted rapidly into the air, and described great 
circles of solicitude a half mile above our heads. 
While aloft, a male Prairie Falcon, whose eyrie we found later, took it 
into his head to persecute the Red-tail. He circled about rapidly and hurled 
himself again and again at the Hawk, but each time, at the expected moment 
of contact, the Buzzard turned deftly face up, presenting his talons to the per- 
secutor ; and each time, of course, the Falcon swerved short to avoid the parry. 
Both the birds were very much in earnest, to judge from the harsh cries which 
escaped them at the moment of “present talons”; but it was evidently an old 
game and an idle one, too, for the Falcon, for no matter at what range or from 
what angle he struck, the Red-tail was always ready, with a quick half-somer- 
sault, to receive him. Conducted thus in the open in a fierce glare of sunlight, it 
was surely a battle for the gods to witness—even tho the issue was only a draw. 
No. 2006. 
SWAINSON’S HAWK. 
A. O. U. No. 342. Buteo swainsoni lonap. 
Description.—Adult male in normal plonage: Upperparts dark brown some- 
what varied by paler or reddish brown; feathers of crown white basally, with 
narrow dark shaft-streaks ; upper tail-coverts reddish brown and white with dusky 
bars (area usually conspicuous as whitish patch in flight) ; flight feathers slaty to 
dark brown (according to age), more or less varied on inner webs by darker bars 
alternating with whitish; tail crossed by 8 or 10 narrow blackish bands; throat 
pure white; chest crossed by broad band of bright chestnut marked by blackish 
shaft-lines; remaining underparts white varied more or less by reddish brown. 
In melanistic phase, throat pencilled with black and underparts clouded, chiefly 
in crosswise pattern, with chestnut; upperparts dark sooty brown. (All stages 
of intergradation between this and normal plumage.) Bill bluish black above and 
on tip, bright yellow on cere, gape, and base of lower mandible; feet blackish; iris 
brown. Adult female: Similar to male but chest-band much darker, dark chestnut 
to brownish black, and remaining underparts clouded and barred with chestnut 
or black on white ground, and white-barred posteriorly. In melanistic phase, r 
dark sooty brown above. /mmature: Above dark brown varied by tawny edgings 
of feathers; head, neck, and underparts, including lining of wings, dull tawny or { 
light brown marked with blackish, head and neck sharply and narrowly streaked, 
breast, flanks, ete., spotted or blotched variously, with blackish ; quills and rectrices 
somewhat as in adult but barring less distinct. Adult male, length: 19.00-20,00 
(482.6-508) ; extent 49.00 (1244.6) ; wing 15.20 (386.1) ; tail 8.50 (215.9) ; tarsus 
_s 
