Burns—On Broap-wiNGep HAwk. 201 
“Tt does little or no harm to poultry and but little to birds, 
except in the breeding season when it has young to feed, when 
it occasionally catches some of the smaller birds.”—( Riley ). 
“Blacksburg, Va.—Principally mice, insects, frogs, etc., and 
occasionally small birds..—(Smyth). 
“Howard Co., Md.—This morning, Dec. 30, 1889, my son, 
Mr. J. Murry Ellzey, surprised and shot a Broad-wing which 
had seized near the house a large Plymouth Rock rooster, 
which he had lacerated and almost denuded of feathers along 
the back, and certainly would have killed but for timely rescue, 
in a very few minutes. This is the second instance this season 
in which Mr. Ellzey has shot this species in the act of seizing 
poultry. At West River, some weeks ago, it appeared in 
greater numbers than ever before remembered and numerous 
complaints of its attacks upon poultry were made.”—( Ellzey. 
Doubtless there are a few individuals in a hundred thousand 
of this species, possessing the strength and spirit, and at some 
period sufficiently near starvation, to attack and kill a fowl 
many times its own weight, but the evidence here presented 
would scarcely convict. I know of several pairs nesting within 
sight almost, of several thousand domestic fowls, and in the 
twenty-two years I have known the species as a local breeder, 
never heard of it molesting poultry in any way. Prof. Ellison 
A. Smyth, Jr., of Blacksburg, Va., informs me that on May 
18, 1906, a farmer brought him an incubating female and 
said it had a nest near his house. His wife claimed it was 
killing her chickens, so he shot it. Its stomach contained part 
of a young rat. Wm. B. Crispin, Salem, N. J., says it never 
molests poultry. 
Samuels writes of an individual missing a red squirrel, then 
dash at and kill a white-throated sparrow—a feat worthy of 
one of the 4Accipiters; and Maynard relates at some length 
the movements of one which had killed and eaten an adult 
Brown Thrasher. Maynard was better acquainted with the 
species than Samuels, whom J] suspect of not infrequently 
confusing his birds. T have an immature bird which was 
shot-as it dashed in the midst of a flock of Red—winged Black— 
