460 BROAD-WINGED HAWK. 
chiefly on worms, beetles, and gravel. They fly low. flirting out their 
broad, white-streaked tail, and uttering their comm» note Tow-heé. 
They build always on the ground, and raise two broods in the season. 
For a particular account of the manners of this species, see our history 
of the male, p. 121. 
The female Towhe is eight inches long, and ten inches in extent; 
iris of the eye, a deep blood color ; bill, black ; plumage above and on 
the breast, a dark reddish drab, reddest on the head and breast; sides 
under the wings, light chestnut; belly, white; vent, yellow ochre ; 
exterior vanes of the. tertials, white ; a small spot of white marks the 
primaries immediately below. their coverts, and another slighter streak 
crosses them in a slanting direction; the three exterior tail-feathers 
are tipped with white ; the legs and feet, flesh-colored. 
This species seems to have a peculiar dislike to the sea-coast, as in 
the most favorable situations, in other respects, within several miles of 
the sea, it is scarcely ever to be met with. Scarcity of its particular 
kinds of favorite food in such places may probably be the reason; as 
it is well known that many kinds of insects, on the larve of which it 
usually feeds, carefully avoid the neighborhood of the sea. 
——_~+>—_ 
BROAD-WINGED HAWK.—FALCO PENNSYLVANICUS. — 
; Fic. 213. ; 
Peale's Museum, No. 407. 
ASTUR? LATISSIMUS. —JarvinE.* 
Falco latissimus, Ord’s reprint of Wilson.— Falco (sub-genus Astur) Pennsyl- 
vanicus, Bonap. Synop. p. 29.— The Broad-winged Hawk, Aud. pl. 91, male 
and female ; Orn. Biog. i. p. 461. 
Tue Hawk, Fig. 213, was shot on the 6th of May, in Mr. Bartram’s 
woods, near the Schuylkill, and was afterwards presented to Mr. Peale, 
in whose collection it now remains. It was perched on the dead limb 
of a high tree, feeding on something, which was afterwards found to 
be the meadow mouse. On my approach, it uttered’a whining kind 
of whistle, and flew off to another tree, where I followed and shot it. 
* Mr. Ord’s name of latissimus is the most proper for this Hawk. Wilson seems 
inadvertently to have given the name of Pennsylvanicus to two species, and the 
latter being applied to the adult plumage, and velox to the young, the former has 
been neipifed | by Temminck and the authors of the Northern Zooloxy; while Ord 
seems to have the merit of discriminating the large species, and giving it the title 
above adopted. 1 have taken Astwr, on the authority of Bonaparte, for its generic 
appellation ; though the habits and kind of food ally it more to the Buzzards, it is 
one of those birds with dubious and combined characters. Mr. Audubon describes, 
it as of a quiet and sluggish disposition, allowing itself 10 be tormented by the Little 
Sparrow Hawk, and ‘Tyrant Flycatcher. It feeds on animals and birds, and also 
on frogs and snakes ; breeds on trees; the nest is placed near the stem or trunk, 
and is composed of dry thistles, and lined with numerous small roots and large 
feathers ; — eggs are four or five, of a dull grayish white, blotched with dark 
brown. — ED 
