138 NOTES ON NEW ENGLAND BIRDS 



HEN-HAWKS (SPECIES UNIDENTIFIED) 1 



Sept. 7, 1851. There were two hen-hawks soared and 

 circled for our entertainment, when we were in the 

 woods on that Boon Plain 2 the other day, crossing each 

 other's orbits from time to time, alternating like the squir- 

 rels of the morning, 3 till, alarmed by our imitation of 

 a hawk's shrill cry, they gradually inflated themselves, 

 made themselves more aerial, and rose higher and higher 

 into the heavens, and were at length lost to sight; yet 

 all the while earnestly looking, scanning the surface of 

 the earth for a stray mouse or rabbit. 



June 8, 1853. As I stood by this pond, I heard a 

 hawk scream, and, looking up, saw a pretty large one 

 circling not far off and incessantly screaming, as I at first 

 supposed to scare and so discover its prey, but its scream- 

 ing was so incessant and it circled from time to time so 

 near me, as I moved southward, that I began to think it 

 had a nest near by and was angry at my intrusion into 

 its domains. As I moved, the bird still followed and 



1 [The term ' ' hen-hawk " is applied in New England ordinarily to 

 the large buzzard hawks, or buteos, — the red-tailed hawk (Buteo bore- 

 alis) and the red-shouldered hawk (B. lineatus). Thoreau, however, 

 seems never to have identified the latter species except in the case of 

 a dead bird brought to him Jan. 12, 1859, and Mr. William Brewster, the 

 ornithologist, who has known the Concord country intimately for many 

 years, informs the editor that the red-tailed hawk was up to about 1888 

 the common hen-hawk there, though it is now almost entirely super- 

 seded by the red-shouldered. It seems probable, therefore, that most 

 of Thoreau's hen-hawks were red-tails, as was certainly the case with 

 many which he describes.] 



2 [In Stow, Mass., near Concord.] 



3 [Two caged squirrels revolving their cylinder alternately.] 



