136 NOTES ON NEW ENGLAND BIRDS 



Early in spring I occasionally see hen-hawks perched 

 about river, and approach quite near them, but never 

 at any other time. 



This hawk's flesh had a very disagreeable rank scent, 

 as I was cutting it up, though fresh, — cutting off the 

 wings, etc., etc. 



Sept. 14, 1855. P. M.— To Hubbard's Close. 



I scare from an oak by the side of the Close a young 

 hen-hawk, which, launching off with a scream and a 

 heavy flight, alights on the topmost plume of a large 

 pitch pine in the swamp northward, bending it down, 

 with its back toward me, where it might be mistaken 

 for a plume against the sky, the light makes all things 

 so black. It has a red tail ; black primaries ; scapulars 

 and wing-coverts gray-brown ; back showing much 

 white and whitish head. It keeps looking round, first 

 this side then that, warily. 



Oct. 28, 1857. I hear the scream of a hen-hawk, 

 soaring and circling onward. I do not often see the 

 marsh hawk thus. What a regular figure this fellow 

 makes on high, with his broad tail and broad wings ! 

 Does he perceive me, that he rises higher and circles 

 to one side ? He goes round now one full circle without 

 a flap, tilting his wing a little ; then flaps three or four 

 times and rises higher. Now he comes on like a billow, 

 screaming. Steady as a planet in its orbit, with his 

 head bent down, but on second thought that small 

 sprout-land seems worthy of a longer scrutiny, and he 

 gives one circle backward over it. His scream is some- 

 what like the whinnering of a horse, if it is not rather 



