160 NOTES ON NEW ENGLAND BIRDS 



April 28, 1858. I see the fish hawk again [two or 

 three indecipherable words] Island. As it flies low, 

 directly over my head, I see that its body is white 

 beneath, and the white on the forward side of the 

 wings beneath, if extended across the breast, would 

 form a regular crescent. Its wings do not form a reg- 

 ular curve in front, but 

 an abrupt angle. They are 



.^^^^-— I \^^ loose and broad at tips. 



^"^ \K ^-^_ 1 his bird goes lishmg 

 «•^ ^ =P^z . „i i„ J „:j„ 



!^~ slowly down one side 

 of the river and up again on the other, forty to sixty 

 feet high, continually poising itself almost or quite 

 stationary, with its head to the northwest wind and 

 looking down, flapping its wangs enough to keep its 

 place, sometimes stationary for about a minute. It 

 is not shy. This boisterous weather is the time to 

 see it. 



May 1, 1858. Suddenly a large hawk sailed over 

 from the Assabet, which at first I took for a hen-har- 

 rier, it was so neat a bird and apparently not very 

 large. It was a fish hawk, with a very conspicuous 

 white crown or head and a uniform brown above else- 

 where ; beneath white, breast and belly. Probably it 

 was the male, which is the smaller and whiter beneath. 

 A wedge-shaped tail. He alighted on a dead elm limb 

 on Prichard's ground, and at this distance, with my 

 glass, I could see some dark of head above the white of 

 throat or breast. He was incessantly looking about as 

 if on his guard. After fifteen minutes came a crow 

 from the Assabet and alighted cawing, about twenty 



