6 THE DUCK HAWK— PEREGRINE. 



A few years since some two or three pairs of Duck Hawks 

 nested regularly on Mounts Tom and Talcott, in Massachusetts 

 and Connecticut, but the poor birds were so continually harassed 

 by enthusiastic oologists and ornithologists, that they have been 

 obliged to seek some more inaccessible position, and now but 

 rarely breed in these States. I am inclined to believe that some of 

 these birds breed every year among the mountains in the northern 

 part of the State of New York, bordering upon the Canadian 

 frontier, and among the adjacent " Chateauguay Mountains " 

 in Canada. During the summer of 1870, the eggs of the Duck 

 Hawk were received by Mr. C. W. Bennett from Vermont, this 

 being the first known instance of their nesting in that State. The 

 site chosen by the Duck Hawk for its eyrie is invariably in some 

 inaccessible cliff or ledge of rock, in a well-selected crannj- of 

 which the nest is deposited. The eggs, according to Baird, are 

 three or four in number, anci of a chocolate color. It has never 

 yet been known to nest in trees, although Wilson says "In the 

 breeding season the Duck Hawk retires to the recesses of the 

 gloom)' cedar swamps, on the tall trees of which it constructs its 

 nest, and rears its young, secure from all molestation." This 

 statement is entirely conjectural, and is strangely at variance 

 with the caution given to naturalists by him on a preceding 

 page, where he says : " Naturalists should be always on their guard 

 when they find themselves compelled to resort to the observations 

 of others, and record nothing as fact which has not been submitted 

 to tlie temperate deliberations of reason. The reverse of this 

 procedure has been a principal cause why errors and absurdities 

 have so frequently deformed the pages of works of science, which, 

 like a plane mirror, ought to reflect only the genuine images of 

 nature." Other writers reproduced this error of Wilson's, and as 

 the European Peregrine was well known to nest on cliffs, it was 

 lor a time conjectured, from this difference in breeding habits, that 

 the European was a distinct species from the American.'"' There 

 being, however, really no difference in this respect, and but little 



•In 183S, Bonaparte, in his "Geographical and Comparative List," gave to the American 

 Peregrine or Duck Hawk, the name Falco anatum. Previous to this time all writers had considered 

 it, and it seems to me justly, as identical with the European Peregrine, or F. peregrinus, — an 

 opinion still held by many eminent ornithologists. Until about this date the Peregrine Falcon was 



