304 NATURAL HISTORY OF BIRDS. 



good lookout to prevent the leather being torn from the rigging, and the meat or 

 game from the stern. These birds are very mischievous and inquisitive ; they will 

 pick up almost anything from the ground ; a large, black glazed hat was earned 

 nearly a mile, as was a pair of the heavy balls used in catching cattle. Mr. Usborne 

 experienced during the survey a more severe loss in their stealing a small Rater's 

 compass in a red morocco leather case, which was never recovered. These birds are, 

 moreover, quarrelsome and very passionate, tearing up the grass with their bills from 

 rage. They are not truly gregarious ; they do not soar, and their flight is heavy and 

 clumsy ; on the gi-ound they run extremely fast, very much like pheasants. ... It is 

 a curious circumstance that when crying out they throw their heads upwards and 

 backwards, after the same manner as the carrancha." 



The species of Ibt/cter, two in number, are inhabitants of the heavily wooded 

 country of tropical South America ; the smaller species, Ibycter ater, apparently not 

 extending north of Panama, while Ibycter americana, approaching the caracara in 

 dimensions, is found in Guatemala and Honduras as well. The plumage in both 

 species is simple black and white, the black with greenish reflections. In ater, this 

 includes the entire plumage except a white band at the base of the tail. In americana 

 the colors are " black with steel green reflections, the abdomen, thighs, and under 

 tail-coverts white ; throat and bare space before the eye, deep red ; cere, blue ; 

 mandibles, yellow; iris, deep red." These birds keep by preference to the trees, and 

 are said to feed largely on insects instead of carrion. 



The hawks, Aceipitrinaa, might be defined as those Falconida?, except true falcons, 

 not already described, and differing from the true falcons in not having a toothed or 

 notched bill. Or, we might say that they were very much like the harriers, Circinas, 

 as to bill, body, tail, and perhaps legs ; but with very different wings. But, to be 

 more explicit, the birds which we group here under the name Accipitrinas, agree with 

 the harriers in the slender form, weak and un-toothed bill, long tail and legs, tarsus 

 about the same length as the tibia, and superciliary shield prominent. The absence of 

 the facial ' ruff ' would at once separate them from the Circinaa, but an equally impor- 

 tant difference, not only from the harriers but from the falcons and buzzards, is seen 

 in the wings, which instead of being long, straight, and tapering, as in the harriers 

 and falcons, or broad, flat, and obtuse as in the buzzards, are short and rather rounded, 

 but very concave beneath, so that their flight is rapid and almost 'whirring,' without 

 the power of lofty soaring or of long continued and easy gliding. The cutting edge 

 of the bill is also usually furnished with a prominent lobe or ' festoon ; ' the middle 

 toe is often very long, the ' pads ' under the joints on all the toes very strongly de- 

 veloped ; and the tarsal envelope very various, usually more or less feathered, and the 

 bare part scutellate in front or behind or both, sometimes with the plates fused to- 

 gether to form a ' booted ' tarsus (as in the true thrushes), or even in some cases par- 

 tially reticulate. 



The hawks, while numerous individually and even specifically (there are sixty or 

 seventy species), are all contained in a very few genera, probably nine tenths of them 

 in the genera Astur (goshawks), and Accipiter (sparrow-hawks). The distinctions 

 between these two groups, moreover, are very slight, so slight indeed that there are 

 very many species which to ordinary eyes seem to have as good a right under one 

 name as the other. In general, Astur contains the larger and especially the stouter 

 forms, in which the tarsus is more extensively feathered. There are, moreover, other 

 points, such as the condition of the tarsal envelope, which should be taken into ac- 



