70 
FOREST AND STREAM 
February, 1920 
CHARACTER SKETCHES OF HAWKS 
MANY WOULD FIND IT BOTH PLEASURABLE AND PROFITABLE TO TELL THESE 
BIRDS APART. THEIR IDENTIFICATION IS LARGELY A MATTER OF EXPERIENCE 
By JOHN T. NICHOLS 
A NUMBER of species cf hawk' stay 
with us the year round, and may 
be met with at any time during 
the winter, but an increase in their 
numbers, or at least a greater conspicu- 
ousness is often one of the fii’st indica- 
tions of returning spring. It seems that 
they are peculiarly characteristic of the 
wind-swept skies of late February and 
March. 
Since the days when falconry was a 
wide-spread, popular pursuit, birds of 
prey have been of comparatively little 
interest to sportsmen, and it is remark- 
able how little out-of-door people in gen- 
eral know of them in this day and gen- 
eration. Hawks are wild birds with 
keen eye-sight, that dislike (with rea- 
son) the company of man. One’s 
glimpses of them are. then, ordinarily 
distant or transitory, affording little op- 
portunity for noticing the differences in 
color and markings between different 
kinds. Nevertheless, they are birds of 
character, each with quite unlike habits, 
and to apply to hawks in general what 
one happens to know of particular hawks 
(as is ordinarily done) is sure to lead 
to grave error. It is our belief that 
many persons who are quite unable to 
tell these birds apart, would find it both 
pleasurable and profitable to do so, and 
below are given some hints which will 
be found useful in the identification of 
the ordinary ones. The easiest to tell 
is the marsh hawk, a large kind, slender, 
with a very long tail. It is usually 
seen flying leisurely, beating and sailing 
in an irregular manner close to the 
ground, often followng up some line of 
trees or bushes, and most frequently 
about marshy places. It has white upper 
tail-coverts, a good identification mark, 
and when it sails for a short distance 
with set wings these are raised from the 
plane of the body with an angle between 
them over the back, and it tilts from 
side to side. The wings as well as the 
tail are comparatively long. It fre- 
quently perches on the ground. When 
vou have become familiar with the ordin- 
ary marsh hawk which is dark above and 
reddish-brown below do not be misled by 
the occasional one which is pearly-gray 
in color, like a gull. 
There are three large hawks, techni- 
cally called Buteos, in some ways oppo- 
sites of the marsh hawk. They are thick- 
set birds with broad wings and short 
tails. Their ordinary flight is direct, a 
few flaps of the wings, then a glide, and 
a few flaps again. These are the species 
The fish hawk has long, pointed wings 
most often seen soaring in circles in the 
sky. They are in order of size, the red- 
tailed hawk, red-shouldered hawk, and 
broad-winged hawk. To recognize a dis- 
tant hawk as a Buteo is easy, to tell 
which of the three, difficult. Ordinarily 
it will be one of the first two, for the 
broad-wing is, for the most part, a wood- 
land bird and occurs in numbers for a 
short period spring and fall only, mi- 
grating to and from its winter home. The 
adult red-tail has a fox-red tail, diagnos- 
tic if seen. The red-shoulder is just 
about as large as a crow, the red-tail ap- 
preciably larger, the broad-wing appre- 
ciably smaller. Adults of the red-shoul- 
der and broad-wing have white bands 
across the tail, which can sometimes be 
made out, all of them narrow in the 
former, the central one broader in the 
broad-wing. It is as well for a layman 
not to try and differentiate a broad-wing 
unless by chance he can see this white 
central tail-band. As the red-tail and 
red-shoulder, however, are equally com- 
mon, our two most conspicuous hawks, 
in fact, it will be worth while to pay at- 
tention to the subtle differences between 
them. One can come to appreciate these 
only by experience, experience which 
need not be so extensive if it is first 
pointed out that the red-tail flaps its 
wings more slowly and its flight seems to 
have a more ponderous less gliding 
character. 
The Buteos feed mostly on small 
rodents, being too sluggish to take game, 
and only rarely interferring with the 
hen-yard. The name “hen-hawk” and 
“chicken-hawk,” by which they are popu- 
larly known, perhaps has some reference 
to their being as big as a hen? 
Other large heavily-built hawks are 
the rough-legged hawk and fish hawk or 
osprey. The former comes South to us 
in the winter, when it might be confused 
with the red-tail. Its flight is somewhat 
more irregular, marsh-hawk-like. It 
commonly hunts the marshes, and has a 
trick which will establish its identity, of 
standing stationary in the air at a pretty 
good height above the marsh with flap- 
ping wings and its legs sticking down. 
The rough-leg has two color phases, one 
blackish throughout, the other lighter. 
The base of its tail is more or less white, 
sometimes a good field mark. It may be 
noted that the similar white mark of the 
marsh hawk is located just over rather 
than on the tail, but there is no excuse 
for confusing the two birds, one long- 
tailed and slender, the other short-tailed 
and heavily built. The fish hawk has 
long relatively pointed wings compared 
with any species with which it might be 
confused, and its flight is in some re- 
spects gull-like; its clear white under 
parts and considerable white on the head 
are diagnostic. The fish hawk pauses 
stationary in the air on flapping wings, 
above the water, as the rough-leg does 
above the marsh, before plunging down 
upon its finny prey. In the few places 
where it is yet common the great size 
of the bald eagle make it easy to recog- 
nize. It may be noted that an eagle tap- 
ers more from shoulders to head than a 
hawk and that young ones are dark, 
blackish, in color all over including the 
head and tail, with a few inconspicuous 
whitish flecks above as though they had 
been sitting under a chicken-roost. 
There are two rather common species 
of swift-flying bird hawks or Accipiters 
to be reckoned with. These have broad 
rounded wings and progress by alternate 
flapping and gliding like the Buteos, but 
are as long-tailed and slender as the 
marsh hawk. The sharp-shinned hawk, 
the commonest, is small or medium sized, 
the Cooper’s hawk medium sized or as 
large as a crow. In each case the female 
is decidedly larger than the male and 
the male of the larger and female of the 
smaller are easy for even the most ex- 
pert to confuse. Again, there is a subtle 
difference in the character of flight be- 
tween the two, that of the sharp-shin 
giving the effect of bouyancy and the 
Cooper’s of momentum. Both are ex- 
tremely destructive, the sharp-shin to 
small birds, the Cooper’s to larger birds, 
game or poultry. But so swiftly do they 
come and so swiftly do they go that sel- 
dom is one brought to justice for its 
crimes. When they alight it is generally 
within a tree, shielded from view by the 
