

OIKCUS HUDSONIUS. 



Falco hudsonius, Linnaeus, Syst. Nat. ed. 12, i. p. 128 (1766). 



? Stria delicatula, Dole, Proc. Bost. Soc. N. H. 1869, p. 295 • Sclater, Ibis, 1871, p. 358 [nee 



Gould). 

 Accipiter hawaii, Dole, Hawaiian Alman. 1879, p. 43 ; Ibis, 1880, p. 241. 

 Circus cyaneus hudsonius, auctt. American, recentiorr. 



This Harrier, possibly a mere straggler to the Sandwich Islands, is undoubtedly identical 

 with that so abundant in North America, and had it not been that Judge Dole in the 

 ' Hawaiian Almanack ' renamed it Accipiter hawaii, no certain synonyms would exist so 

 far as our group is concerned. The mistake is the more important as it was reproduced 

 in 'The Ibis' for 1880. 



Of the subject of our notice I obtained a single specimen in November 1888 — on the 

 morning of my final departure from the Islands — which had been shot near Honolulu, 

 while Judge Dole was also kind enough to present me with a skin obtained by a friend of 

 his some years since during a shooting expedition to one of the mountain ranges of Oahu. 

 Though I made several excursions on that island and camped out for a considerable 

 time in a particularly favourable locality, I did not meet with the bird. The natives 

 have no name for it— To (Buteo solitarius) being the only species of Hawk recognized 

 by them ; and such being the case, I am of opinion that it is confined, as far as 

 the Sandwich Islands are concerned, to Oahu, an island which has never been famed 

 for its bird-catchers, and where, therefore, it would be more likely to have been 

 overlooked by the residents. Even there it may be of comparatively recent introduc- 

 tion and so may not as yet have spread to the other islands of the group. 



The habits of this species, so well known in North America as the " Marsh Hawk," 

 require no notice here. It is recorded as occurring all over that continent to the 

 Isthmus of Panama, as well as in Cuba and in the Bahamas ; but the present is the 

 first publication of the fact that its range extends to the Sandwich Islands. 



