128 NOTES ON NEW ENGLAND BIKDS 



SHARP-SHINNED HAWK 



May 4, 1855.' Sitting in Abel Brooks's Hollow, see 

 a small hawk go over high in the air, with a long tail 

 and distinct from wings. It advanced by a sort of limp- 

 ing flight yet rapidly, not circling nor tacking, but 

 flapping briskly at intervals and then gliding straight 

 ahead with rapidity, controlling itself with its tail. It 

 seemed to be going a journey. Was it not the sharp- 

 shinned, or jFalco /uscus ? ^ 



July 21, 1858. P. M. — To Walden, with E. Bart- 

 lett and E. Emerson. 



The former wished to show me what he thought an 

 owl's nest he had found. Near it, in Abel Brooks's 

 wood-lot, heard a note and saw a small hawk fly over. 

 It was the nest of this bird. Saw several of the young 

 flitting about and occasionally an old bird. The nest 

 was in a middling-sized white pine, some twenty feet 

 from the ground, resting on two limbs close to the main 

 stem, on the south side of it. It was quite solid, com- 

 posed entirely of twigs about as big round as a pipe- 

 stem and less ; was some fifteen inches in diameter and 

 one inch deep, or nearly flat, and perhaps five inches 

 thick. It was very much dirtied on the sides by the 

 droppings of the young. As we were standing about the 

 tree, we heard again the note of a young one approach- 

 ing. We dropped upon the ground, and it alighted on 

 the edge of the nest; another alighted near by, and a 

 third a little further off. The young were apparently 

 as big as the old, but still lingered about the nest and 

 ^ [The sharp-shinned hawk is now known as Accipiter velox.] 



