284 RED-TAILED HAWK. 



sorry to say, are almost all I have to give towards elucidating 

 their history. Birds, naturally thinly dispersed over a vast 

 extent of country ; retiring during summer to the depth of the 

 forests to breed ; approaching the habitations of man, like 

 other thieves and plunderers, with shy and cautious jealousy ; 

 seldom permitting a near advance ; subject to great changes 

 of plumage ; and, since the decline of falconry, seldom or 

 never domesticated, — offer to those who wish eagerly to inves- 

 tigate their history, and to delineate their particular char- 

 acter and manners, great and insurmountable difficulties. 

 Little more can be done in such cases than to identify the 

 species, and trace it through the various quarters of the world 

 where it has been certainly met with. 



The red-tailed hawk is most frequently seen in the lower 

 parts of Pennsylvania during the severity of winter. Among 

 the extensive meadows that border the Schuylkill and Dela- 

 ware, below Philadelphia, where flocks of larks (Almida 

 magna), and where mice and moles are in great abundance, 

 many individuals of this hawk spend the greater part of the 

 winter. Others prowl around the plantations, looking out for 

 vagrant chickens ; their method of seizing which is by sweep- 

 ing swiftly over the spot, and, grappling them with their 

 talons, bear them away to the woods. The bird from which 

 the figure in the plate was drawn was surprised in the act of 

 feeding on a hen he had just killed, and which he was com- 

 pelled to abandon. The remains of the chicken were imme- 

 diately baited to a steel trap, and early the next morning the 

 unfortunate red-tail was found a prisoner, securely fastened 

 by the leg. The same hen which the day before he had 

 massacred was, the very next, made the means of decoying 

 him to his destruction, — in the eye of the farmer, a system of 

 fair and just retribution. 



This species inhabits the whole United States, and, I believe, 

 is not migratory, as I found it in the month of May as far 

 south as Fort Adams, in the Mississippi territory. The young 

 were, at that time, nearly as large as their parents, and were 



