48 RED-TAILED BUZZARD— HEN HAWK." 



perhaps a very exceptional form ; but I have recently been in- 

 formed by Mr. Passmore, of the Montreal Nat. Hist. Soc, that 

 he also observed the same in a young Red-tail kept alive by him 

 for some time, which he afterwards stuffed and mounted. This 

 specimen Mr. Passmore yet retains in his collection, and as he 

 has faithfully perpetuated the true color of its eyes, the singular 

 spectacle of a zohite-eycd Hawk ma)' be seen by any one who 

 may so desire. 



The Red-tail is a rather large and very rotund or robust 

 Hawk, with short stout legs and rather short wings. They vary 

 somewhat in length, some males being only 19 or 20 inches 

 long — from tip of bill to end of tail ; while as we have just seen, 

 the female sometimes is upwards of 25 inches in length, with 

 considerable expanse of wing. The specimen figured on the 

 accompanying plate is a fine adult bird of 'this species. It was 

 shot in the Eastern Townships, and was prepared for the present 

 work b\- Mr. \Vm. Couper, naturalist, of Montreal. 



In the western half of the continent the individuals of this 

 species — as is the case with so man)- ot the Hawks — are more 

 rufous and much more intensely colored birds than their eastern 

 congeners, but in all other respects are the same. On this 

 difference was based the species described as B. niontamts by 

 Cassin and other writers, which was thought to replace, to the 

 westward, the Red-tail D. borealis. This error, however, and 

 others regarding this species, are fully explained and done away 

 with in the foot-note appended to this article, from Coues' " Birds 

 of the North-West." 



The nest of the Red-tail is generally constructed in a lofty 

 tree and among the top-most branches. It is large, bulky and 

 rather flat, and is constructed of small branches, moss, grass, and 

 generally, though not always, lined with feathers. I cannot speak 

 with certainty of the exact- complement of eggs, having found from 

 one to four in different localities ; but two is the average number 

 of young hatched. Coues says the eggs are " three in number, 

 about 2.40 long by a little less than 2.00 broad." Their ground 



