RED-TAILED HAWK. 83 



them away to the woods. The bird from which the figure in 

 the plate was drawn, was surprised in the act of feeding on a 

 hen he had just killed, and which he was compelled to abandon. 

 The remains of the chicken were immediately baited to a steel- 

 trap, and early the next morning the unfortunate Red-tail was 

 found a prisoner, securely fastened by the leg. The same hen 

 which the day before he had massacred, was, the very next, 

 made the means of decoying him to his destruction; in the eye 

 of the farmer a system of fair and just retribution. 



This species inhabits the whole United States; and, I believe, 

 is not migratory, as I found it in the month of May, as far south 

 as Fort Adams, in the Mississippi territory. The young were 

 at that time nearly as large as their parents, and were very 

 clamorous, making an incessant squeeling noise. One, which I 

 shot, contained in its stomach mingled fragments of frogs and 

 lizards. 



The Red-tailed Hawk is twenty inches long, and three feet 

 nine inches in extent; bill blue black; cere and sides of the 

 mouth yellow, tinged with green; lores and spot on the under 

 eye-lid white, the former marked with fine radiating hairs; eye- 

 brow, or cartilage, a dull eel skin colour, prominent, projecting 

 over the eye; a broad streak of dark brown extends from the 

 sides of the mouth backwards; crown and hind-head dark brown, 

 seamed with white and ferruginous; sides of the neck dull fer- 

 ruginous, streaked with brown; eye large; iris pale amber; back 

 and shoulders deep brown; wings dusky, barred with blackish; 

 ends of the five first primaries nearly black; scapulars barred 

 broadly with white and brown; sides of the tail-coverts white, 

 barred with ferruginous, middle ones dark, edged with rust; 

 tail rounded, extending two inches beyond the wings, and of a 

 bright red brown, with a single band of black near the end, and 

 tipt with brownish white; on some of the lateral feathers are 

 slight indications of the remains of other narrow bars; lower 

 parts brownish white ; the breast ferruginous, streaked with dark 

 brown; acrovss the belly a band of interrupted spots of brown; 



