298 BROAD-WINGED HAWK. 



Scarcity of its particular kinds of favourite food in such places 

 may probably be the reason, as it is well known that many 

 kinds of insects, on the larvae of which it usually feeds, care- 

 fully avoid the neighbourhood of the sea. 



BROAD-WINGED HAWK. {Falco Pennsylvanicus.) 



PLATE LTV.— Fig. 1. 



Peale's Museum, No. 407. 

 ASTUR? LATISSIMUS.—Jarvin-e* 



Falco latissimus, Ord's reprint of Wilson. — Falco (sub-genus Astur) Pennsylvanicus, 

 Bonap. Synop. p. 29.— The Broad-winged Hawk, Aud. pi. 91, male and 

 female ; Orn. Biog. i. p. 461. 



This new species, as well as the rest of the figures on the 

 same plate, is represented of the exact size of life. The hawk 

 was shot on the 6th of May in Mr Bartram's woods, near the 

 Schuylkill, and was afterwards presented to Mr Peale, in whose 

 collection it now remains. It was perched on the dead limb of 

 a high tree, feeding on something which was afterwards found 

 to be the meadow mouse (figured in plate 50). On my 

 approach, it uttered a whining kind of whistle, and flew off to 

 another tree, where I followed and shot it. Its great breadth 



* Mr Ord's name of latissimus is the most proper for this hawk. 

 Wilson seems inadvertently to have given the name of Pennsylvanicus 

 to two species, and the latter being applied to the adult plumage, and 

 velox to the young, the former has been retained by Temminck and the 

 authors of the " Northern Zoology," while Ord seems to have the merit 

 of discriminating the large species, and giving it the title above adopted. 

 I have taken Astur, on the authority of Bonaparte, for its generic 

 appellation ; though the habits and kind of food ally it more to the 

 buzzards, it is one of those birds with dubious and combined characters. 

 Mr Audubon describes it as of a quiet and sluggish disposition, allowing 

 itself to be tormented by the little sparrow hawk and tyrant flycatcher. 

 It feeds on animals and birds, and also on frogs and snakes ; breeds on 

 trees ; the nest is placed near the stem or trunk, and is composed of 

 dry thistles, and lined with numerous small roots and large feathers ; 

 the eggs are four or five, of a dull grayish white, blotched with dark 

 brown. — Ed. 



