AMERICAN SPARROW HAWK. 171 
north, to breed. It has much of the Flycatcher in its manners, though 
the form of its bill is decisively that of the Warbler. These birds are 
occasionally seeh for about a week or ten days, viz., from the 25th of 
April to the end of the first week in May. [ sought for them in the 
Southern States in winter, but in vain. It is highly probable that they 
breed in Canada; but the summer residents among the feathered race 
on that part of the continent are little known or attended to. The 
habits of the bear, the deer, and beaver, are much more interesting to 
those people, and for a good, substantial reason too, because more lu- 
crative; and unless there should arrive an order from England for a 
cargo of skins of Warblers and Flycatchers, sufficient to make them 
an object worth speculation, we are likely to know as little of them 
hereafter as at present. 
This species is five inches long, and seven and a half broad, and is 
wholly of a fine, light slate color above ; the throat, cheeks, front and 
upper part of the breast, are black; wings and tail, dusky black, the 
primaries marked with a spot of white immediately below their coverts ; 
tail, edged with blue; belly and vent, white; legs and feet, dirty yel- 
low; bill, black, and beset with bristles at the base. The female is 
more of a dusky ash on the breast, and, in some specimens, nearly 
white. 
They, no doubt, pass this way on their return in autumn, for I have 
Iyself shot several in that season; but as the woods are then still 
thick with leaves, they are much more difficult to be seen, and make 
a shorter stay than they do in spring. 
—+——_ 
AMERICAN SPARROW HAWK.—FALCO SPARVERIUS — 
Fie. 71. — Femare. 
Emerillon de St. Domingue, Buff. i. 291. Pl. ent. 465.— Arct. Zool. 212.— Little 
Falcon, Lath. Syn.i. p. 110, No. 94. Ib. 95. — Peale’s Museum, No. 389. 
FALCO SPARVERIUS. — Linnzvs. 
Falco sparverius, Bonap. Synop. p. 27.—Falco sparverius, Little Rusty-crowned 
alcon, North. Zool. ii. p. 31. 
In no department of ornithology has there been greater confusion, 
or more mistakes made, than among this class of birds of prey. The 
great difference of size between the male and female, the progressive 
variation of plumage to which, for several years, they are subject, and 
the difficulty of procuring a sufficient number of specimens for exam- 
ination, — all these causes conspire to lead the naturalist into almost 
unavoidable mistakes. For these reasons, and in order, if possible, to 
ascertain each species of this genus distinctly, I have determined, 
where any doubt or amhiguity prevails, to represent both male and 
female, as fair and perfect specimens of each may come into my pos- 
session. According to fashionable etiquette, the honor of precedence, 
