170 THE Birps Asout Us. 
scribed. Where do so many hawks come from ? is the 
question usually asked when they wheel through the 
air hundreds at a time, and for hour after hour. 
The Broad-winged Hawk is not as well known a 
bird as the red-tail. It is only a winter visitor in 
New Jersey, I think, but Dr. Warren says it is a resi- 
dent in Pennsylvania. I have noticed it in November 
and later, but it practically disappears in early spring, 
at least from the tide-water portion of the Delaware 
River Valley. 
Dr. Warren says,— 
“When in quest of food its flight isin circles. At times, when 
circling like the Sparrow-hawk, it will stand for an instant beating 
the air and then descend with great velocity upon its prey, which it 
secures, not in its descent, but as it is on the rise.’’ 
In midwinter, when the meadows are firmly frozen, 
I have often seen these hawks walking over the 
flats at low tide, but could not determine what par- 
ticular kind of food, if any, they were in search of. 
When disturbed they rose leisurely and perched on 
a dead tree or an exposed limb of a living tree, and 
both when leaving the ground and when alighting 
they utter a rather prolonged, mellow whistle that is 
pleasing, and very different from the cat-like scream 
of the red-tailed hawk. 
The Red-shouldered Hawk is more generally 
known as the Winter Falcon; but it has not been my 
experience that the people living in the country were 
given to discriminating between these large hawks, 
calling them by the same name and attributing the 
same objectionable habits to them all, and no amount 
of argumentation will ever avail; while the birds 
