RED-TAILED ILAWK. 451 
their history. Birds, naturally thinly dispersed over a vast extent of 
country ; retiring during summer to the depth of the forests to breed; 
approaching the habitations of man, like other thieves and plunder-- 
ers, with & y and cautious jealousy; seldom permitting a near ad- 
vance; subject to great changes of plumage; and, since the decline 
of falconry, seldom or never domesticated, — offer to those who wish 
eagerly to investigate their history, and to delineate their particular 
character and manners, great and insurmountable difficulties. Little 
more can be done in such cases than to identify the species, and trace 
it through the various quarters of the world where it has been certain- 
ly met with. 
The Red-tailed Hawk is most frequently seen in the lower parts of 
Pennsylvania during the severity of winter. Among the extensive 
meadows that border the Schuylkill and Delaware, below Philadel- 
phia, where flocks of Larks, (.4lauda magna,) and where mice and 
moles are in great abundance, many individuals of this Hawk spend 
the greater part of the winter. Others prowl around the plantations, 
looking out for vagrant Chickens; their method of seizing which is, 
by sweeping swiftly over the spot, and, grappling them with their 
talons, bear them away to the woods. The bird from which Fig. 205 
was drawn, was surprised in the act of feeding on a Hen he had just 
killed, and which he was compelled to abandon. The remains of the 
Chicken were immediately baited to a steel trap, and early the next 
morning the unfortunate Red-Tail was found a prisoner, securely faa- 
tened by the leg. The same Hen which the day before he had massa- 
cred, was, the very next, made the means of decoying him to his de- 
struction, — in the eye of the farmer, a system of fair and just retri- 
bution. 
This species inhabits the whole United States, and, I believe, is not 
migratory, as I found it, in the month of May, as far south as Fort 
Adams, in the Mississippi Territory. The young were, at that time, 
nearly as large as their parents, and were very clamorous, making an 
incessant squealing noise. One, which I shot, contained in his stom- 
ach mingled fragments of frogs and lizards. 
The Red-tailed Hawk is twenty inches long, and three feet nine 
inches in extent; bill, blue black; cere, and sides of the mouth, yel- 
low, tinged with green; lores, and spot on the under eyelid, white, 
the former marked with fine, radiating hairs; eyebrow, or cartilage, a 
dull eel-skin color, prominent, projecting over the eye; a broad streak 
of dark brown extends from the sides of the mouth backwards ; crown 
and hind head, dark brown, seamed with white, and ferruginous; sides 
of the neck, dull ferruginous, streaked with brown; eye, large ; iris, 
pale amber; back and shoulders, deep brown; wings, dusky, barred 
with blackish ; ends of the five first primaries, nearly black; scapu- 
lars, barred broadly with white and brown; sides of the tail-coverts, 
white, barred with ferruginous, middle ones dark, edged with rust; 
variously named. From the testimonies of Bonaparte and Audubon,is may, how- 
ever, be certainly considered as the young or immature bird—an idea which Wil- 
son himself entertained, and showed by his mark of interrogation to the young, and 
the quotation of its synonymes. ‘The figure at Fig. 2 is the young in immature plu- 
mage, where the red tail bas not yet appeared, and which is known to authors un- 
der the name of F. Leveriav 1s. — Eb. 
