624 Letters, Extracts, Notices, ^c. 



flight of Buzzards [Buteo swainsoni). They came up from 

 the east, about one thousand of them (on a rough estimate), 

 and settled in the cotton- wood trees of our fenced horse- 

 pasture, some of the larger trees containing fifty or more. 

 I watched them through my binoculars, and, observing that 

 most of them went to sleep immediately after alighting, I 

 took my Holland ejector rook-rifle and killed six ; but only 

 one of these appeared to be an adult. 



I continued shooting for a bit in the hope of securing 

 another adult, but without success. Some of the birds, 

 presumably the old ones, were much more wary than the 

 others and, flying from tree to tree, kept out of shot, while 

 their less suspicious companions offered a tempting target at 

 a range of about fifty yards. One bird, which had a broken 

 wing, savagely went for my hand, and fixing its talons in 

 my right thumb held on like grim death until I managed to 

 give it the "coup de grace." Upon going outside the horse- 

 pasture I was astonished to see large numbers of the Buz- 

 zards on the prairie sitting amongst the cattle ; but being 

 unable to approach them on foot on account of the steers, I 

 returned for my horse ; and noticing as I passed that the 

 trees in the enclosure were now considerably thinned of their 

 occupants, I concluded that many of those in the trees had 

 gone to recruit the ranks of those on the ground. When 

 the flock took wing ofi" the prairie, they alighted in the heavy 

 timber on the river-bank, and I still continued my attempt 

 to obtain another specimen with Avhite breast and chin-spot ; 

 but the birds so coloured were very wild, and, so far as I 

 could make out with the binoculars, there were very few of 

 them. I killed twelve altogether, and picked out six which 

 showed variations in plumage, the remainder being duplicates 

 of one or other of the six selected. 



I may add that on the same afternoon I killed a Red- 

 tailed Buzzard {B. borealis), which was sitting in a cotton- 

 wood tree. At this time there were at least three or four 

 pairs of this species in the vicinity of the ranclie. 



It struck me as a remarkable fact that so many Buzzards 

 should be gathered in one place, and I do not think the 



