What's the Good of a Hawk? 



By Dr. Jl. W. Shufeldt 



OF what use to man is this great 

 army of hawks, harriers, and 

 falcons we see or read about? 

 There was a time when these "hawks" 

 and their kind were simply regarded as fit 

 subjects for the brush and pen of the pro- 

 fessional ornith- 



ologist; for the 

 scalpel of the taxi- 

 dermist, or a legiti- 

 mate target for 

 every gunner in 

 the land that came 

 across them in the 

 open. 



There is a splen- 

 did array of falcon- 

 birds in our 

 avifauna, the 

 principal represen- 

 tatives being the 

 Eagles, the Fal- 

 cons, the Hawks, 

 Kites and Harriers. 

 Besides these, we 

 have two species 

 of Caracaras, as 

 well as the famous 

 Osprey or Fish 

 Hawk. When one 

 includes the latter, 

 with the four dif- 

 ferent kinds of 

 Eagles recogni/.ed 

 by American or- " 

 nithologists, there 

 are in the United 

 States, all told, no fewer than thirty-two 

 species and twenty-one sub-species of 

 such l)irds. None of these are as 

 abundant as they were half a centur\' or 

 more ago, or even less lime. Indeed, 

 during the autumnal migration of birds 

 southward in the early seventies, in 

 the southern part of Fairfield County in 

 Connecticut, I have seen as many as a 

 tliousand or more different kinds of 

 iiawks pass overhead in the course of a 

 day; I very much doubt that one now 

 could count, at the same time of the 

 year, over a hundred. 



Profile of the Osprey 

 lives entirely upon fish 



The thoughtless farmer argues that 

 hawks of every kind kill domestic 

 p(Hiltry, and that he, for one, is for exter- 

 minating the entire lot of them. That 

 tliousands of chickens, ducks, young 

 turkeys, tame pigeons, guinea-fowls and 

 other denizens of 

 the farmer's yard, 

 have been, in time, 

 destroyed by 

 hawks, there can 

 be no question ; but 

 even so, our inves- 

 ti gat ion of such 

 a serious matter 

 should not rest 

 upon a snap judg- 

 ment, and lead us 

 to condemn the 

 entire tribe on that 

 account. 



In the first place, 

 some hawks, as the 

 Fish Hawk, li\e 

 entirely upon fish, 

 and never attack 

 or destroy any kinti 

 of fowl or mam- 

 mal, although it 

 has the strength to 

 kill a full-grown 

 gobbler, were it to 

 tr\- to do so. The 

 illustration here 

 given is the repro- 

 duction of a photo- 

 graph I made of a 

 bird not quite full grown, which was in 

 my possession for several days; I also 

 made the other photographs for this 

 article from li\ing specimens of hawks 

 in my keeping at different times. In 

 so far as man's interests are concerned, 

 the Msii Hawk or CKsprey is entirely 

 harmless. 



All those hawks which we call Kites 

 do not, as a rule, attack birds or quad- 

 ru[)eds of any kind, and ficver domestic 

 ])oultry. The>- destnn-, however, in the 

 course of a year, millions of noxious 

 insects anil no end of \ermin, which prey 



or Fish Hawk which 

 and other water food 



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