CF VIRGINIA 113 
area. The nest is a well-made, though bulky, affair 
of small sticks and twigs, dry leaves, and bark fiber, 
placed in a tall tree from forty to seventy feet up in heavy 
woods or timber. The eggs number from two to three, a 
white ground, spotted and blotched with different shades 
of brown. Often the eggs are unmarked. Size, 2.55x1.80. 
These birds, like all the others of the hawk family, are 
persistently shot and persecuted by all gunners on account 
of their being known as poultry thieves, though this 
practice by the birds is seldom resorted to unless pushed 
by extreme hunger. They remain throughout the entire 
year and raise but one brood. Their food consists of the 
various small mammals, such as voung rabbits, squirrels, 
moles, mice, lizards, snakes, frogs, and insects. As a 
whole they are more beneficial than harmful. 
[339]. Buteo lineatus lineatus (Gmelin). Red- 
shouldered Hawk. 
[Hen Hawk]. 
Raxeare.—FEastern North America. Breeds from 
Manitoba, southern Keewatin, southern Quebec, Nova 
Scotia, and Prince Edward Island south nearly to the 
Gulf States and west to edge of the Great Plains; winters 
south to the Gulf Coast. 
This is our most common resident hawk, and is the 
cause of the killing of the Broad-winged and Marsh 
Hawks by all gunners in general. While this hawk 
(Red-shouldered) will occasionally take a small or half- 
grown chicken (and I have had them take mine too), their 
main diet of food is small mammals, such as mice, young 
