ROUGH-LEGGED HAWK 147 



their swift flight and scolding, reveal to me some large 

 bird of prey hovering over the river. I perceive by its 

 markings and size that it cannot be a hen-hawk, and 

 now it settles on the topmost branch of a white maple, 

 bending it down. Its great armed and feathered legs 

 dangle helplessly in the air for a moment, as if feeling 

 for the perch, while its body is tipping this way and 

 that. It sits there facing me some forty or fifty rods 

 off, pluming itself but keeping a good lookout. At this 

 distance and in this light, it appears to have a rusty- 

 brown head and breast and is white beneath, with rusty 

 leg-feathers and a tail black beneath. When it flies 

 again it is principally black varied with white, regular 

 light spots on its tail and wings beneath, but chiefly 

 a conspicuous white space on the forward part of the 

 back ; also some of the upper side of the tail or tail- 

 coverts is white. It has broad, ragged, buzzard-like 

 wings, and from the white of its back, as well as the 

 shape and shortness of its wings and its not having a 

 gull-like body, I think it must be an eagle. 1 It lets it- 

 self down with its legs somewhat helplessly dangling, 

 as if feeling for something on the bare meadow, and 

 then gradually flies away, soaring and circling higher 

 and higher until lost in the downy clouds. This lofty 

 soaring is at least a grand recreation, as if it were 



1 [Thoreau was evidently thinking only of distinguishing the bird 

 from the fish hawk with its long and narrow wings. The description 

 answers very well to that of the rough-legged hawk, the only New 

 England species with fully feathered legs except the much rarer golden 

 eagle, which lacks the white markings described. Neither of the eagles 

 has short wings, while the wings of the rough-legged hawk are notably 

 broad and buzzard-like.] 



