178 NOTES ON THE 
SPECIFIC CHARACTERS. 
Wings and tail long, the latter deeply forked. Head and 
neck, under wing coverts, secondary quills at their bases, and 
entire under parts white; back, wings and tail black, with a 
metallic lustre; purple on the wing coverts and back; green ~ 
and blue on the other parts; tarsi and toes greenish-blue; bill 
horn color. As with most hawks, the male is the smaller. 
Length, (of female), 23 to 25; wing, 16 to 17.50; tail, 14. 
Habitat, Southern United States and north to Minnesota. 
CIRCUS HUDSONIUS (L.). (331). 
MARSH HAWK. 
This is undeniably the most abundant of the hawks which 
visit the State, arriving often before the ice has entirely disap- 
peared from the lakes. About the 20th of March the avaunt 
couriers of the species may be seen solitarily reconnoitering the 
marshes, but an unfavorable change in the meteorological con- 
ditions may send them away fora few days, to return next time 
in greater numbers. Late in April incubation is entered upon. 
Their favorite nesting places are in sedgy, marshy meadows, 
that have bunches, or tussocks of shrub-willows, in the center 
of which they build a somewhat bulky nest of grass, in which 
they lay four to tive dingy bluish-whiteeggs. When the young 
are sufficiently advanced, they make short pedestrian excur- 
sions in the immediate vicinity of the nest, before the wings 
are sufficiently developed for them to take to flight, under 
which circumstances the solicitude of the parents is manifestly 
very great. To one acquainted with the habits of the species 
it is not ordinarily difficult to find the nest after the young are 
partially grown. Their principal food consists of frogs, and 
snakes are equally acceptable under all circumstances. They 
catch occasionlly, a field mouse, moles and ground squirrels. 
Their distribution is universal over the portions of the State 
where the conditions are favorable to supply them with food. 
Such a region is characteristically a country of lakes, a con- 
siderable number of which have subsided, leaving both ex- 
tensive and frequently limited areas in the most favorable con- 
dition to make it the Marsh Hawk’s paradise in the breeding 
season. 
And they yield their summer home only when the approach 
of relentless winter compels them to do so, which, with the 
hardier birds is not till in the ides of November. Occasionally 
