76 



RED-TAILED HAWK. 



seizing which, is by sweeping 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 

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

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

 tunate 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 very clamou- 

 rous, making an incessant squeeling noise. One, which I shot, 

 contained in its stomach mingled fragments of frogs and lizards. 



The Red-tailed Hawk is twenty inches long, and three feet 

 nine inches in extent; bill blue black; cere and sides of the mouth 

 yellow, tinged with green ; lores and spot on the under eye-lid 

 white, the former marked with fine radiating hairs; eyebrow, or 

 cartilage, a dull eel skin color, prominent, projecting over the eye; 

 a broad streak of dark brown extends from the sides of the mouth 

 backwards; crown and hind head dark brown seamed with white 

 and ferruginous ; sides of the neck dull ferruginous streaked with 

 brown ; eye large ; iris pale amber ; back and shoulders deep 

 brown; wings dusky, barred with blackish; ends of the five first 

 primaries nearly black; scapulars barred broadly with white and 

 brown; sides of the tail coverts white, barred with ferruginous, 

 middle ones dark, edged with rust; tail rounded, extending two 

 inches beyond the wings, and of a bright red brown, with a single 

 band of black near the end, and tipt with brownish white ; on some 

 of the lateral feathers are slight indications of the remains of other 

 narrow bars ; lower parts brownish white ; the breast ferruginous 



