THE SPARROW HAWK. 29 



appear to be constant, nor peculiar to any locality." The sexes 

 are unlike, the adult female being not only the larger bird, but 

 differing further in being banded transversely on the upper parts, 

 much in the same manner as the young birds. 



The Sparrow Hawk lives well in confinement, and causes 

 considerable amusement to his captors by his droll antics. Many 

 anecdotes are told of this bird in captivity, but most of these have 

 already appeared in our popular works on ornithology. The 

 following, however, related by Coues in his " Birds of the North- 

 West," is new. He says: "While I was at Columbia, in .South 

 Carolina, a neighbor had three Sparrow Hawks for some time. 

 As they had been taken from the nest when quite young, they 

 became in a measure reconciled to captivity. They ate any kind 

 of meat freely, and as they grew up, began to display much of their 

 natural spirit. When tormented in the various ingenious ways 

 people have of ' stirring up ' caged birds, they would resent the 

 indignity by snapping the bill, beating with the wings, and clutch- 

 ing with their talons at the offending cane or umbrella-tip. One 

 of them was a cripple, having a broken leg very badly set, and the 

 other two used to bully him dreadfull)-. One night, whether from 

 not having been fed sufficiently, or being in unusually bad humor, 

 they set upon him, killed him outright, and then almost devoured 

 him before morning." Dr. Wood of East Windsor Hill states that 

 a few years since a pair of Sparrow Hawks attacked and killed 

 a pair of doves, took possession of their dove-cot and laid 

 four eo-(js. 



This Hawk is a summer migrant to Newfoundland, but Reeks 

 states that it is not so common a bird as the Pigeon Hawk. It is 

 a resident and abundant bird in Florida, where it breeds in March. 

 According to Allen, " Florida specimens are considerably smaller 

 than New England ones — the former being intermediate in size 

 between the latter and the West Indian and South American 

 representatives of this species, which have been regarded as dis- 

 tinct species, and to which various names have been applied by 

 different writers. Audubon observes that he found this species in 

 the Southern States, and more especially in Florida, so much 



