106 FALCONIDjE. 



many observers, as the one last mentioned, Schomburgk, 

 Prince Max, Nuttall and Wilson. Audubon writing of the 

 species says : 



" They always feed on the wing. In calm and warm 

 weather, they soar to an immense height, pursuing the large 

 insects called Musquito Hawks, and performing the most 

 singular evolutions that can be conceived, using their tail 

 with an elegance of motion peculiar to themselves. Their 

 principal food, however, is large grasshoppers, grass-cater- 

 pillars, small snakes, lizards, and frogs. They sweep close 

 over the fields, sometimes seeming to alight for a moment to 

 secure a snake, and holding it fast by the neck, carry it off, 

 and devour it in the air. When searching for grasshoppers 

 and caterpillars, it is not difficult to approach them under 

 cover of a fence or tree. When one is then killed and falls 

 to the ground, the whole flock comes over the dead bird, as 

 if intent upon carrying it off." 



Dr. Bonyan (Proc. Zool. Soc. 1851, p. 57) in some 

 notes on this species as observed by him in British Guyana, 

 states that it takes small birds when feeding, adding that it 

 soars to a greater height than any other Hawk known to him, 

 and Mr. Kobert Owen has given an interesting account (Ibis, 

 1860, p. 240) of a large flock of Swallow-tailed Kites, from 

 an hundred-and-fifty to three-hundred in number, which 

 he encountered while travelling in Guatemala. They were 

 gliding to and fro near the ground, some of them within a 

 dozen yards of it, in a close body, not one straying from the 

 rest, in a manner that reminded him of our English Swifts, 

 and he found that they were feeding upon a swarm of bees 

 which was slowly skirting the hillside. "At times," he 

 continues, "birds would pass within four or five yards of 

 us, giving us time to observe their movements accurately. 

 Every now and then the neck would be bent slowly and 

 gracefully, bringing the head quite under the body, the beak 

 continuing closed. At the same time, the foot, with the 

 talons contracted as if holding an object in its grasp, would 

 be brought forward until it met the beak. This position 

 was only sustained a moment, during which the beak was 



