378 ROUGH-LEGGED FALCON. 



salt-marshes, along our bays and inlets. In such places you may see it 

 perched on a stake, where it remains for hours at a time, unless some 

 wounded bird comes in sight, when it sails after it, and secures it without 

 manifesting much swiftness of flight. It feeds principally on moles, mice, 

 and other small quadrupeds, and never attacks a duck on the wing, al- 

 though now and then it pursues a wounded one. When not alarmed, it 

 usually flies low and sedately, and does not exhibit any of the courage 

 and vicrour so conspicuous in most other hawks, suffering thousands of 

 birds to pass without pursuing them. The greatest feat I have seen them 

 perform was scrambling at the edge of the water, to secure a lethargic frog. 



They alight on trees to roost, but appear so hungry or indolent at 

 all times, that they seldom retire to rest until after dusk. Their large 

 eyes indeed, seem to indicate their possession of the faculty of seeing at 

 that late hour. I have frequently put up one, that seemed watching for 

 food at the edge of a ditch, long after sunset. Whenever an opportunity 

 ofi'ers, they eat to excess, and, like the Turkey Buzzai'ds and Carrion 

 Crows, disgorge their food, to enable them to fly off". The species is 

 more noctuinial in its habits than any other Hawk found in the United 

 States. 



Nothing is known respecting their propagation in the United States, 

 and as I have no desire to compile, I must pass over this subject. They 

 leave us in the beginning of March, and betake themselves to more nor- 

 thern countries ; yet not one did either myself, or my youthful and en- 

 terprising party, observe on my late rambles in Labrador. 



I have given you the figure of what I suppose to have been a middle- 

 aged bird, and will at another time place before you one of the dark- 

 coloured kind, known by the name of Fulco niger, but which I consider 

 as the old bird of the present species. 



However highly I esteem the labours of Wilson, I am here com- 

 pelled to differ from him. How that accurate observer made two diffe- 

 rent species of the young and the adult Rough-legged Falcon, I cannot 

 well understand, more especially as his description of Falco logopus and 

 F. niger are so similar, that one might infer from their comparison that 

 they referred to the same species. 



Of Falco lagopus he says: — " The Rough-legged Hawk measures 

 twenty-two inches in length, and four feet two inches in extent ; cere, 

 sides of the mouth, and feet, rich yeUow ; legs feathered to the toes, with 

 brownish-yellow plumage, streaked with brown ; femorals the same ; toes 



