524 SHARP-SHINNED HAWK. 
ever it seizes one too heavy to be carried off, it drops to the ground 
with it, and, being close by, I have forced it to desist from commit- 
ting further mischief, as it fears man quite as much as its poor quarry 
dreads itself. One of these occurrences, which happened in the neigh- 
bourhood of Charleston, in South Carolina, is thus related in my jour- 
nal. . 
Whilst walking one delightful evening in autumn, along a fine 
hedge-row formed by the luxuriant Rocky Mountain rose-bushes, I ob- 
served a male of this species alighted in an upright position on the top- 
bar of a fence opposite to me. I marked it with particular attention, 
to see what might follow. The Hawk saw meas plainly as I did him, 
and kept peeping now at me, and now at some part of the hedge op- 
posite, when suddenly, and with the swiftness of an arrow, it shot past 
me, entered the briars, and the next instant was moving off with a 
Brown Thrush, Turdus rufus, in itstalons. The Thrush, though seized 
by the sharp claws of the marauder, seemed too heavy for him to carry 
far, and I saw both falling to the ground. On running up, I observed 
the anxiety of the Hawk as I approached, and twice saw it attempt to 
rise on wing to earry off its prize; but it was unable to do so, and be- 
fore it could disengage itself I was able to secure both. The Thrush 
must have been killed almost instantaneously, for, on examining it, I 
found it quite dead. 
My friend Tuomas Nurratt, Ksq., tells us that in the “ thinly 
settled parts of the States of Georgia and Alabama, this Hawk seems 
to abound, and proves extremely destructive to young chickens, a single 
one having been known regularly to come every day until he had 
carried away between twenty and thirty. At noon-day, while I was 
conversing with a planter, one of these Hawks came down, and with- 
out ceremony, or heeding the loud cries of the housewife, who most re- 
luctantly witnessed the robbery, snatched away a chicken before us.” 
Again, while speaking of the wild and violent manner of this bird, he 
adds “ descending furiously and blindly upon its quarry, a young 
Hawk of this species broke through the glass of the green-house, at 
the Cambridge Botanic Garden ; and fearlessly passing through a se- 
cond glass partition, he was only brought up by the third, and caught, 
though little stunned by the effort. His wing-feathers were much 
torn by the glass, and his flight in this way so impeded as to allow of 
his being approached.” 
