AMERICAN SPARROW HAWK. 173 
this active bird, yet we are not to suppose it altogether destitute of 
delicacy in feeding. It will seldom or never eat of any thing that it 
has not itself killed, and even that, if not (as epicures would term it) 
in good eating order, is sometimes rejected. A very respectable friend, 
through the medium of Mr. Bartram, informs me, that one morning he 
observed one of these Hawks dart down on the ground, and seize a 
mouse, which he carried to a fence post, where, after examining it for 
some time, he left it, and, a little while after, pounced upon another 
mouse, which he instantly carried off to his nest, in the hollow of a 
tree hard by. The gentleman, anxious to know why the Hawk had 
rejected the first mouse, went up to it, and found it to be almost cov- 
ered with lice, and greatly emaciated! Here was not only delicacy 
of taste, but- sound and prudent reasoning: —If I carry this to my 
nest, thought he, it will fill it with vermin, and hardly be worth 
eating. 
The Blue Jays have a particular antipathy to this bird, and frequently 
insult it by following and imitating its notes so exactly, as to deceive 
even those well acquainted with both. In return for all this abuse, the 
Hawk contents himself with, now and then, feasting on the plumpest 
of his persecutors, who are, therefore, in perpetual dread of him; and 
yet, through some strange infatuation, or from fear that, if they lose 
sight of him, he may attack them unawares, the Sparrow Hawk no 
sooner appears than the alarm is given,.and the whole posse of Jays 
follow. 
The female of this species, which is here faithfully represented 
from a very:beautiful living specimen, furnished by a particular friend, 
-is eleven inches long, and twenty-three from tip to tip of the expanded 
wings. The cere and legs are yellow; bill, blue, tipped with black ; 
space round the eye, greenish blue; iris, deep dusky; head, bluish 
ash; crown, rufous; seven spots of black on a white ground surround 
the head, in the manner represented in the figure ; whole npper parts 
reddish bay, transversely streaked with black; primary and secondary 
quills, black, spotted on their inner vanes with brownish white ; whole 
lower parts, yellowish white, marked with longitudinal streaks of 
brown, except the chin, vent, and femoral feathers, which are white ; 
claws, black. : 
The male of this species (which is an inch and a half shorter, has 
the shoulder of the wings blue, and also the black marks on the head, 
but is, in other respects, very differently marked from the female) will 
appear in an early part of the present work, with such other particu- 
lars as may be thought worthy of communicating.* 
* See description of male, and note, in a subsequent. part of this work. 
15* 
