SHARP-SHINNED HAWK 129 



returned to it. I could hear them coming some distance 

 off. Their note was a kind of peeping squeal, which 

 you might at first suspect to be made by a jay; not 

 very loud, but as if to attract the old and reveal their 

 whereabouts. The note of the old bird, which occasion- 

 ally dashed past, was somewhat like that of the marsh 

 hawk or pigeon woodpecker, a cackling or clattering 

 sound, chiding us. The old bird was anxious about her 

 inexperienced young, and was trying to get them off. 

 At length she dashed close past us, and appeared to 

 fairly strike one of the young, knocking him off his 

 perch, and he soon followed her off. I saw the remains 

 of several birds lying about in that neighborhood, and 

 saw and heard again the young and old thereabouts for 

 several days thereafter. A young man killed one of the 

 young hawks, and I saw it. It was the Falco fuscus^ 

 the American brown or slate-colored hawk. Its length 

 was thirteen inches; alar extent, twenty-three. The 

 tail reached two or more inches beyond the closed 

 wings. Nuttall says the upper parts are " a deep slate- 

 color " (these were very dark brown) ; also that the 

 nest is yet unknown. But Wilson describes his F.velox 

 (which is the same as Nuttall's F. fuscus) as " whole 

 upper parts very dark brown," but legs, greenish-yellow 

 (these were yellow). The toes had the peculiar pendu- 

 lous lobes which W. refers to. As I saw it in the woods, 

 I was struck by its dark color above, its tawny throat 

 and breast, brown-spotted, its clean, slender, long yel- 

 low legs, feathered but little below the knee, its white 

 vent, its wings distinctly and rather finely dark-barred 

 beneath, short, black, much curved bill, and slender 



