THE PURRE. 485 
These birds, in conjunction with several others, sometimes collect 
together in such flocks, as to seem, at a distance, a large cloud of 
thick smoke, varying in form and appearance every instant, while it 
performs its evolutions in air, As this cloud descends and courses 
along the shores of the ocean, with great rapidity, in a kind of waving, 
serpentine flight, alternately throwing its dark and white plumage to 
the eye, it forms a very grand and interesting appearance. At such 
times the gunners make prodigious slaughter among them; while, as 
the showers of their companions fall, the whole body often alight, or 
descend to the surface with them, till the sportsman is completely 
satiated with destruction. On some of those occasions, while crowds 
of these victims are fluttering along the sand, the Small Pigeon Hawk, 
constrained by necessity, ventures to make a sweep among the dead in 
presence of the proprietor, but as suddenly pays for his temerity with 
his life. Such a tyrant is man, when vested with power, and unre- 
strained by the dread of responsibility! — 
The Purre is eight inches in length, and fifteen inches in extent; 
the bill is black, straight, or slightly bent downwards, about an inch 
and a half long, very thick at the base, and tapering to a slender, blunt 
point at the extremity; eye, very small; iris, dark hazel; cheeks, gray; 
line over the eye, belly, and vent, white; back and scapulars, of an 
ashy brown, marked here and there with spots of black, bordered with 
bright ferruginous; sides of the rump, white ; tail-coverts, olive, cen- 
tred with black; chin, white; neck below, gray; breast and sides, 
thinly marked with pale spots of dusky, in some pure white; wings, 
black, edged and tipped with white; two middle tail-feathers, dusky, 
the rest, brown ash, edged with white; legs and feet, black; toes, 
bordered with a very narrow scalloped membrane. The usual broad 
band of white crossing the wing, forms a distinguishing characteristic 
of almost the whole genus. : 
On examining more than a hundred of these birds, they varied con- 
siderably in the black and ferruginous spots on the back and scapulars ; 
some were altogether plain, while others were thickly marked, partic- 
ularly on the scapulars, with a red rust color, centred with black. The 
females were uniformly more plain than the males; but many of the 
latter, probably young birds, were destitute of the ferruginous spots. 
On the 24th of May, the eggs in the females were about the size of 
partridge shot. In what particular regions of the north these birds 
breed is altogether unknown. _ , 
41* : 
ae 
