|02 SHARP-SHINNED OR SLATE-COLOURED HAWK. 



too heavy to be carried off, it drops to the ground with it, and, being close 

 by, I have forced it to desist from committing further mischief, as it fears 

 man quite as much as its poor quarry dreads itself. One of these occurrences, 

 which happened in the neighbourhood of Charleston, in South Carolina, is 

 thus related in my journal. 



Whilst walking one delightful evening in autumn, along the fine hedge- 

 row formed by the luxuriant Rocky Mountain rose-bushes, I observed a 

 male of this species alighted in an upright position on the top bar of a fence 

 opposite to me. I marked it with particular attention, to see what might 

 follow. The Hawk saw me as plainly as I did him, and kept peeping now 

 at me and now at some part of the hedge opposite, when suddenly, and with 

 the swiftness of an arrow, it shot past me, entered the briars, and the next 

 instant was moving off with a Brown Thrush, Tardus rufus, in its talons. 

 The Thrush, though seized by the sharp claws of the marauder, seemed too 

 heavy for him to carry far, and I saw both falling to the ground. On running 

 up, I observed the anxiety of the Hawk as I approached, and twice saw it 

 attempt to rise on wing to carry off its prize; but it was unable to do so, and 

 before it could disengage itself I was able to secure both. The Thrush must 

 have been killed almost instantaneously, for, on examining it, I found it 

 quite dead. 



My friend Thomas Nuttall, Esq., tells us that in the "thinly settled 

 parts of the States of Georgia and Alabama, this Hawk seems to abound, and 

 proves extremely destructive to young chickens, a single one having been 

 known regularly to come every day until he had carried away between 

 twenty and thirty. At noon-day, while I was conversing with a planter, 

 one of these Hawks came down, and without ceremony, or heeding the loud 

 cries of the housewife, who most reluctantly witnessed the robbery, snatched 

 away a chicken before us." Again, while speaking of the wild and violent 

 manner of this bird, he adds, "descending furiously and blindly upon its 

 quarry, a young Hawk of this species, broke through the glass of the green- 

 house at the Cambridge Botanic Garden; and fearlessly passing through a 

 second glass partition, he was only brought up by the third, and caught, 

 though little stunned by the effort. His wing-feathers were much torn by 

 the glass, and his flight in this way so impeded as to allow of his being 

 approached." 



Whilst travelling to some distance, the Sharp-shinned Hawk flies high, 

 though in a desultory manner, with irregular quick flappings of the wings, 

 and at times, as if to pause for awhile and examine the objects below, moves 

 in short and unequal circles, after which it is seen to descend rapidly, and 

 then follow its course at the height of only a few feet from the ground, 

 visiting as it were every clump of low bushes or briar patches likely to be 



