2 8o SWALLOW-TAILED HAWK. 



steadiness ; and continue to be seen thus, passing to their 

 winter quarters, for several days. They usually feed from 

 their claws as they fly along. Their flight is easy and graceful, 

 with sometimes occasional sweeps among the trees, the long 

 feathers of their tail spread out, and each extremity of it used 

 alternately to lower, elevate, or otherwise direct their course. 

 I have never yet met with their nests. 



These birds are particularly attached to the extensive 

 prairies of the western countries, where their favourite snakes, 

 lizards, grasshoppers, and locusts, are in abundance. They 

 are sometimes, though rarely, seen in Pennsylvania, and New 

 Jersey, and that only in warm and very long summers. A 

 specimen now in the Museum of Philadelphia was shot within 

 a few miles of that city. We are informed that one was 

 taken in the South Sea, off the coast which lies between Ylo 

 and Arica, in about lat. 23 deg. south, on the 11th of September, 

 by the Reverend the Father Louis Feuillee.* They are also 

 common in Mexico, and extend their migrations as far as 

 Peru. 



The swallow-tailed hawk measures full two feet in length, 

 and upwards of four feet six inches in extent ; the bill is 

 black ; cere, yellow, covered at the base with bristles ; iris of 

 the eye, silvery cream, surrounded with a blood-red ring ; 

 whole head and neck, pure white, the shafts, fine black hairs ; 

 the whole lower parts also pure white ; the throat and breast, 

 shafted in the same manner ; upper parts, or back, black, 

 glossed with green and purple ; whole lesser coverts, very 

 dark purple ; wings long, reaching within two inches of the 

 tip of the tail, and black ; tail also very long, and remarkably 

 forked, consisting of twelve feathers, all black, glossed with 

 green and purple ; several of the tertials, white, or edged with 

 white, but generally covered by the scapulars ; inner vanes of 

 the secondaries, white on their upper half, black towards their 

 points ; lining of the wings, white ; legs, yellow, short, and 

 thick, and feathered before half way below the knee; claws, 

 * Jour, des Obs., torn. ii. 33. 



