Krider’s Hawk 175 
nesting in hills (Gale) ; El Paso co., March, May, October (Aiken coll.) ; 
Wet Mountains to 10,000 feet (Lowe); Mesa co., breeding to 9,000 
feet (Rockwell) ; San Juan co., breeding (Drew) ; Fort Lewis, breeding 
(Morrison). 
Habits—The Red-tail, often called the Hen-Hawk, 
suffers a good deal of unjust persecution, on account 
perhaps of its name, for it is undoubtedly of considerable 
service to the farmer. Though it may occasionally 
take a chicken, the great bulk of its prey consists of 
mice and other small mammals: out of 562 stomachs 
examined by Fisher, 409 contained traces of these. 
It also destroys a good many snakes as well as large 
numbers of grasshoppers, especially in the fall, and the 
good it does undoubtedly far exceeds the harm. 
In the plains and lower valleys the Red-tail builds 
in tall cotton-woods; at higher elevations, in spruces, 
on sandstone ridges in the cliffs (see Plate 4), or in scrub- 
oak eight to ten feet up. Morrison, Dille, Rockwell and 
Gale all give accounts of the nesting habits. 
Gale found a nest near Gold Hill, May 27th, 1884; 
it was placed in the crotch of an upper limb of a cotton- 
wood, about thirty-five feet above the ground, and 
was a bulky structure, built of twigs and lined with a 
little dry grass and a few green sprays of the cotton- 
wood. It contained three nearly fresh eggs—the usual 
number. These were greenish chalky-white, varyingly 
but scantily marked with brown ; they average 1°3 x 1°8. 
The parents made no effort to defend their nest, but 
quietly withdrew. 
Krider’s Hawk. Buteo borealis kridert.: 
A.0.U. Checklist no 337a—Colorado Records—Dille 87, p. 99 ; Cooke 
97, p. 74. 
Description.—Closely resembling B. b. calurus but lighter-coloured, 
with a great deal of white on the upper side, especially on the upper 
tail-coverts and head; tail pale rufous, usually without the black 
