WINTER FALCON. 315 
oncile him to confinement ; and would not suffer a person to approach 
without being highly irritated, throwing himself backward, and strik- 
ing with expanded talons, with great fury. Though shorter winged 
than some of his tribe, yet I have no doubt but, with proper care, he 
might be trained to strike nobler game in a bold style, and with great 
effect. But the education of Hawks, in this country, may well be 
postponed for a time, until fewer improvements remain to be made in 
that of the human subject. : 
Length of the Winter Hawk, twenty mches; extent, forty-one 
inches, or nearly three feet six inches; cere and legs, yellow, the lat- 
ter long, and feathered for an inch below the knee; bill, bluish black, 
small, furnished with a tooth in the upper mandible; eye, bright am- 
ber; cartilage over the eye, very prominent, and of a dull green; 
head, sides of the neck, and throat, dark brown, streaked with white ; 
lesser. coverts, with a strong glow of ferruginous; secondaries, pale 
brown, indistinctly barred with darker; primaries, brownish orange, 
spotted with black, wholly black at the tips; tail, long, slightly 
rounded, barred alternately with dark and. pale brown; inner vanes, 
white ;, exterior feathers, brownish orange ; wings, when closed, reach 
rather beyond the middle of the tail; tail-coverts, white, marked with 
heart-shaped spots of brown; breast and belly, white, with numer- 
ous long drops of brown, the shafts blackish; femoral feathers, large, 
pale yellow ochre, marked with numerous minute streaks of pale 
‘brown ; claws, black. The legs of this bird are represented by ar 
4 
from the district which it had selected for itself. The cry of the Winter Hawk. is 
clear and prolonged, and resembles the syllables kay-o.” . . 
“The Red-shouldered Hawk, or, as T would prefer calling it, the Red-breasted 
Hawk, although dispersed over the greater part of the United States, is rarely ob- 
served in the middle districts ; where,.on the coutrary, the Winter Falcon usually 
makes its appearance from the north at the approach of every autumn, and is of 
more common occurrence. ‘This bird is one ‘of the most noisy of its genus, during 
‘spring especially, when it would be difficult to approach the skirts of woods border- 
ing a large plantation, without hearing its discordant, shrill notes, ka-hee, ka-hee, as 
: itis seen sailing, in rapid circles, at a very great elevation. ~ Its ordinary flight is 
even and protracted. It is'a more general inhabitant of the woods than most of 
our other-species, particularly during the summer. 
“The interior of woods seems, as I have said, the fittest haunts for the Red- 
shouldered Hawk. He sails through them, a few yards above the ground, and sud- 
denly alights on the low branch of a tree, or the top of a dead stump, from which 
he silently watches, in an erect posture, for the appearance of squirrels, upon which 
he ae directly, and kills them in an instant, afterwards. devouring them on the 
round, ‘ : 
‘ “ At the approach of spring, this specics begins to pair; and its flight is accom- 
panied with many circlings and zigzag motions, during which it emits its shrill 
cries. The top of a tall tree seems-to be preferred, as T have found its nest most 
commonly placed there, not far from the edges of woods bordering plantations ; it 
is seated in the forks of a'large branch, towards its extremity, and is as bulky as 
‘ that of the common Crow ; it is formed externally of dry sticks and Spanish moss, 
and is lined with withered grass and fibrous roots of different sorts, arranged in a 
circular manner. The cggs are generally four, sometimes five, of a broad, oval 
‘form, granulated all over, pale blue, faintly blotched with brownish red at the 
smaller end.” : 
From the above account, it is seen that the Red-shouldered Hawk has much 
more the habits of an Astwr than the other, which scems to lean towards the Circi ; 
the breeding-places of the latter are, however, not mentioned by any writer. The 
different states of plumage in these birds are deserving of further research, — Ep. 
‘ 
