SWALLOW-TAILED KITE. 65 



According to Audubon^ "the flight of this elegant species of Hawk is 

 singularly beautiful and protracted. It moves through the air with such 

 ease and grace that it is impossible for any individual who takes the least 

 pleasure in observing the manners of birds not to be delighted by the 

 sight of it whilst on wing. Gliding along in easy flappings, it rises in 

 wide circles to an immense height, inclining in various ways its deeply- 

 forked tail to assist the direction of its course, dives with the rapidity of 

 lightning, and suddenly checking itself reascends, soars away, and is soon 

 out of sight. At other times a flock of these birds, amounting to fifteen 

 or twenty individuals, is seen hovering around the trees. They dive in 

 rapid succession amongst the branches, glancing along the trunks, and 

 seizing in their course the insects and small lizards of which they are in 

 quest. They always feed on the wing. In calm and warm weather they 

 soar to an immense height, pursuing the large insects called Musquito- 

 Haivks, and performing the most singular evolutions that can be conceived, 

 using their tail with an elegance of motion peculiar to themselves. Their 

 principal food, however, is large grasshoppers, grass-caterpillars, small 

 snakes, lizards, and frogs. They sweep close over the fields, sometimes 

 seeming to alight for a moment to secure a snake, and holding it fast by 

 the neck, carry it off and devour it in the air. When searching for grass- 

 hoppers and caterpillars, it is not difficult to approach them under cover 

 of a fence or tree. When one is then killed and falls to the ground, the 

 whole fiock comes over the dead bird, as if intent upon carrying it ofi'. 

 The Fork-tailed Hawks are also very fond of frequenting the creeks, which 

 in that country [States of Louisiana and Mississippi] are much encum- 

 bered with drifted logs and accumulations of sand, in order to pick up 

 some of the numerous water-snakes which lie basking in the sun. At 

 other times they dash along the trunks of trees and snap off the pupae of 

 the locust or that insect itself. Although when on wing they move with 

 a grace and ease which it is impossible to describe, yet on the ground they 

 are scarcely able to walk." 



Dresser, writing on the habits of this bird in Texas (Ibis, 1865, p. 325), 

 says : — " On the Colorado, Brazos, and Trinity rivers it is one of the com- 

 monest birds, and every child knows it under the names of Scissor-tailed, 

 Forky-tailed, and Fish-tailed Hawk, or Fish-Hawk. It only remains 

 during the summer months, arriving early in April. ... I watched one 

 very closely as it was hunting after grasshoppers on a piece of prairie 

 near Brenham. It went over the ground as carefully as a well-trained 

 pointer, every now and then stooping to pick up a grasshopper; and, 

 to me, the feet and bill appeared to touch the insect simultaneously. 

 They seem very fond of wasp-grubs, and will carry a nest up to some 

 high perch and sit there, holding it in one claw, and picking out the 

 grubs. I once saw one drop a nest and catch it before it reached the 



VOL. I. p 



