268 Riley, The Broad-winged Hawks of the West Indies. [juW 



and held with one foot, in the first instance, keeping the other in 

 rest. This, it turned out, was a brilliant manoeuvre on the part of 

 the bird, for the moment the stricken fox turned his head viciously 

 to snap at the thing holding him, he received the eagle's spare foot 

 full in the face, and was forthwith rendered powerless. "The 

 strong and curved claws speedily muzzled him, and after a few 

 desperate bounds in the air, he almost gave up struggling, being 

 held as in a trap until the falconer ran up, and with his couteau de 

 chasse gave him the finishing stroke." In parts of European 

 Russia trained Golden Eagles are regularly exposed for sale and 

 realize very high prices, being used on large game for which the 

 Goshawk would be unsuitable. About the middle of the last 

 century a Captain Green, of the British army, and resident in 

 England, tamed and trained a Golden Eagle to catch hares and 

 rabbits. Authentic accounts of this bird relate that it was "fairly 

 tractable," but its "great weight and the difficulty of keeping it 

 keen (owing to its power of fasting) made it too troublesome to 

 manage satisfactorily." Evidently the Russian and Khirghiz 

 falconers have overcome these difficulties. (See Harting, op. cit., 

 pp. 170-175.) 



NOTES ON THE BROAD-WINGED HAWKS OF THE 



WEST INDIES, WITH DESCRIPTION OF 



A NEW FORM.i 



BY J. H. RILEY. 



Ever since the summer of 1904, when working upon a small 

 collection of birds from Barbuda and Antigua, British West Indies, 

 I have had in mind three specimens of immature hawks which 

 were then provisionally (though doubtfully) referred to Bitteo 

 plati/pterus. Since then, they have been shown to numerous 

 visiting and resident ornithologists, all of whom have declared they 

 had never seen the immature northern bird in similar plumage. 



1 By permission of the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. 



