1903
Sept. 4
Brewster, Mass.
  Two Marsh Hawks in brown plumage and apparently 
young birds which I watched for half-an-hour or more
this afternoon were engaged during a portion of this time
in beating back and forth, after their customary fashion,
over a narrow strip of marsh and cat-tail bay that
bordered a large fresh water brook. They also frequently 
alighted, and one spent fully 15 minutes, on the ground
in a newly-made cranberry bog where they walked 
about slowly and sedately - but by no means 
awkwardly - looking, while thus engaged, not unlike
two big domestic fowls. Through my glass, at
a distance of about one hundred yards, I
could see that they were constantly picking at
the cranberry vines and swallowing smallish objects
which they took from them with their bills.
I was unable to work out just what these 
objects were. They may have been grasshoppers (which
were numerous there at the time) or some of the 
insects which are a source of serious injury to
these vines but it is also not impossible that
they were cranberries.
Peculiar behavior of two young Marsh Hawks