HAWKS AND OWLS. 



Editor American Field :— It is amusing to see some 

 sportsmen carrying shells loaded with No. 5 shot to shoot 

 every hawk they see. Many harmless and useful birds are 

 thus destroyed. 



Dr. Fisher has already informed the readers of 

 the Amerioajt Field what hawks prey upon birds, 

 and are consequently destructive of game. For giving this 

 useful information, it has been said: "He takes a bold 

 stand in favor of hawks and owls." 



It is unfortunate that the word buzzard, meaning proper- 

 ly the heavy, broad-winged hawks, seen often moping for 

 hours at a time upon dead trees, or sailing slowly over the 

 fields, should be erroneously employed to designate one of 

 our vultures — the turkey-buzzard — which is no more buz- 

 zard than turkey. The buzzards, with rare exceptions, 

 prey upon small quadrupeds, frogs, reptiles and insects. I 

 onc« shot a buzzard, the stomach of which contained a 

 number of leeches. 



The red-shouldered hawk (Buteo Uneatus) is the only buz- 

 zard which I ever knew to catch a quail, and my experience 

 in tht! field extends over many years. I was riding one 

 Sunday with a friend, when I saw a red-shouldered hawk 

 feeding upon a bird of some sort. Curious to know what 

 the bird was, I borrowed an old musket from a negro, and 

 shooting the hawk, I found that his quarry was a quail. 



My experience corroborates the statement of Dr. Fisher 

 that Cooper's hawk {Accipiter coop&ri) and the sharp-shinned 

 hawk (Ai-eipiter nelox) are the only hawks (with the excep- 

 tion of the falcons and goshawk) which habitually prey 

 ui)on birds. My knowledge of this fact is the result of ob- 

 servation iu the field, the goshawk excepted whose hLstorj' 

 I know from what I have read, while the Doctor has ob- 

 tained his information in a way not less sure, that of actual 

 inspection of the contents of .stomachs of hawks. 



These blue-darters, as they are commonly called here, 

 never deign to catch a mou.se any more than the duck hawk 

 (Faleo perigrims anatum) would stoop from the cold bosom 

 of ether to bear off quarry so insignificant. 



It has happened to me many times to come upon Cooper's 

 hawk with a bird from the covey that I had scattered a few 

 minutes before. I never let this marauder pass without a 

 shot; but I would not walk twenty steps out of my way to 

 shoot a buzzard; in fact, I would not shoot him at all, if I 

 could "identify" him without killing him. Reader, did you 

 ever see Cooper's hawk dart into a covey of birds, when 

 you had flushed them? How Bob White screams (if I may 

 use the word) 1 how he fears his terrible enemy. Every in- 

 dividual of the covey joins in this chorus of dread alarm, 

 and every one is scattered to the four winds. You may 

 hunt in vain for them. If you find them, they lie so close 

 that you have to tread upon them before they rise. Twenty 

 ten-bores might belch their thunder at them, and they 

 would not be half as much frightened as they are at the 

 sudden appearance of that hawk. Where does Cooper's 

 hawk come from, so often that he seems some days to be 

 ubiquitous? He is not guided by sight alone ; he hears the 

 whirr of wings, the "game qui prnt," the bang ! bang ! he 

 meets Bob White half way ; and then 



" What a panic's in ' his breaelie.' " 

 This rapacious hawk does not confine himself to birds 

 alone ; domestic fowls and pigeons frequently fall a prey to 

 him; he will return day after day to the same place, till he 

 has carried off every chicken of a brood. A short time ago, 

 on returning home one day, I saw a pile of feathers under 

 ' the pigeon house. I thought at first that a cat had caught 

 a pigeon and eaten it there. A few hours after a negro boy 

 i informed me that a hawk had just flown out of a cedar tree 

 I not a hundred yards from the pigeon house. I seized my 

 Lefover hammorless, slipped into it two shells loaded with 



four drams of Hazard's FQ- powder, and one and a quarter 

 ounces of LeRoy No. 8 shot, and started out. The boy di- 

 rected me to the spot where he had seen the hawk light. 

 Before I was within seventy-five or eighty yards of the tree 

 in which he was perched, the ha\ ' 'i^w; fortunately I had 

 a defective shell in my right barr. i, id my gun failed to 

 fire. lie lighted again seven.. xlreS *5^ie4s^ off in 

 a row o£ cedar trees, y'l marked as " ^well 

 as I could the place J wLcre I saw hlH^, 

 pitch. I then approached under CP ' f the trees, as near 

 as I thought I could go, without jfeci len by the hawk, 

 and sending the boy on the opppsiu ^ ^e of the cedars, I 

 told him to scare the hawk out to pay side of the row. My 

 maneuver succeeded perfectly. Soon I heard a flutter of 

 wings among the cedar boughs, and I had a clipping right 

 quarterer, and scored a clean kill at forty yards. This was 

 an adult, and the largest of the species that I ever saw. His 

 talons were still bloody, and bore unmistakable traces of 



his having ca ught my pi geon. 



I The sharp-Bhinned hawk, known also by the name "blue- 

 darter," preys mostly upon small birds, sparrows, thrushes 

 and the like. His scientific name, velox, is appropriate, no 

 hawk, the falcons accepted, being swifter than this little 

 hawk. He is similar in color to Cooper's hawk, but much 

 smaller, being a miniature likeness of the latter. 



The goshawk {Accipiter atricapillm), known commonly 

 as the blue hen-hawk, is more powerful even than Cooper's 

 hawk. I have never shot one of the go.shawks, though I 

 believe I once saw one. They are found iu more northern 

 latitudes. The goshawk belongs to the same genus as 

 Cooper's, and the sharp-shinned hawk ; his habits are the 

 same ; his flight and method of capturing his prey are simi- 

 lar also. He is equally destructive of game, and conse- 

 quently every sportsman should have a shell loaded with 

 No. 5 shot for this marauder, and not waste his time (as I 

 have seen some sportemeu), trying to stalk every ignoble 

 buzzard that crossed his path. 



While shooting in the field, I have once or twice been 

 suddenly surprised by the appearance on the scene of the 

 peregrine falcon, or great duck-hawk. Somewhere out of 

 sight far above the reach of vision, he floats in the sky : 

 Despiciem mare velivolum terrasqueJacerUes. 

 I had scatterd a covey of birds one day in a patch of 

 sedge grass, at lea.st a half a mile from any woods. My 

 dos pointed a bird ; I flushed it and missed. A peregrine 

 falcon fell like a thunderbolt from the clouds, and over- 

 took Bob White, but, like myself, the falcon scored a miss, 

 just grazing the back of the frightened bird, which escaped 

 the leaden missiles hurled at it, and then the sharp talons of 

 the hungry hawk that followed in their wake. It would 

 have been downright murder to disturb this bird again that 

 day. I marked him down; but I did not try to flush him 

 again. 



On another occasion, I was shooting and had just entered 

 an old field, where I heard the cries of the always noisy 

 killdees flying wildly overhead. At the same time, I saw 

 a hawk flying far below a killdee. It was a peregrine fal- 

 ' con; his long, pointed wings beat the air with quick, power- 

 ! ful strokes, while one eye was turned upwards on the in- 

 coming killdee. Lancaster can perhaps tell us how the 

 hawk shot up, swift as an arrow, cutting the flight, of the 

 killdee at right angles, and seizing the bird in his extended 

 talons as he passed up. Edisto could not have calculated 

 bettpr the distance to hold ahead, than Falco p. a. did in this 

 instance. SulHce it to say that the killdee flew into the 

 claws of the wily falcon, which bore his quarry off about a 

 hundred yards to the top of a tall oak. Not many minutes 

 elapsed before I was standing under the tree. A charge of 

 No. 8 shot was launched at the falcon; the killdee fell from 

 his grasp ; he dropped to the underside of the limb on which 

 he was perched; hung quivering there a few seconds and 

 i then followed his dead quarry to the ground. W. 0. A. 



