t 
PRAIRIE BIRDS OF SOUTHERN ILLINOIS. 203 
ing with the team until we were concealed for a moment by the 
intervening underwood, I- would jump out and leave my compan- 
ions to keep on with the wagon. While the unsuspecting kite was 
intently watching the passing team, I found it usually quite easy 
to steal through the thickets near enough to the tree to shoot it. 
In this manner I succeeded in shooting three fine specimens during 
the day. 
While driving across the prairie, in the course of my hunt after 
these birds, I observed what appeared to be a Mississippi kite 
perched upon a dead tree in a bushy ravine. We approached it 
as described above, and as we drew nearer, we noticed something 
in its appearance which caused us to see that it was not an Ictinia. 
We were almost near enough to shoot from the wagon, when it 
flew, and began circling about, when it was immediately assaulted 
by two or three Ictinias, that continued to annoy it. en im- 
mediately overhead I shot at it, but without serious effect, for it 
immediately flew straight into a large elm tree in the ravine, and 
alighted among the branches. As it soared abdut above us Iim- 
mediately recognized it as the Asturina plagiata, a species which 
is so strongly marked in all its characters, the plumage especially, 
that no other hawk could possibly be mistaken for it by one at all 
acquainted with this family. I succeeded in getting another shot 
at it, but the distance was so great that the bird escaped. 
In this article I have named the more abundant and character- 
istic birds of the prairie portions of southern Illinois. Future 
observations, i in such favorable localities as that explored by us, 
will no doubt reveal many additional, and perhaps several un- 
looked-for species, when we take into consideration the fact that 
my acquaintance with the prairie avi-fauna depends solely on these 
two trips. The number of species actually observed in the local- 
ity, numbered about ninety-five on each occasion ; while the species 
breeding in the immediate neighborhood are about one hundred 
and forty, a very rich avi-fauna for a restricted locality, when the 
fact is taken into consideration, that of this number only about 
twenty-five are water birds—the remainder of one hundred and 
fifteen species of land birds being, perhaps, as large a number of 
regular summer residents as any single locality in North America 
can boast. 
