46 
FALCO HALI^TUS, 
happens to drop, either on the land or on the | 
There is a kind of abstemious dignity in this habit 
the hawk, superior to the gluttonous voracity displa}'|i 
hy most other birds of prey, particularly by the ba* 
eagle, whoso piratical robberies committed on the p/^ 
sent species, have been already fully detailed in treatjw 
of his history. The hawk, however, in his 
pursuits, sometimes mistakes his mark, or overrates 
strength, by striking fish too large and powerful ‘ , 
him to manage, by whom he is suddenly dragged 
and, though he sometimes succeeds in extricating bWj 
self, after being taken three or four times down, T 
oftener both parties perish. The bodies of sturgef’^j 
and of several other large fish, with a fish-hawk 1*'^ 
grappled in them, have, at dift'ereut times, been fo"" 
(lead on the shore, cast up by the waves. , 
The fish-hawk is doubtless the most numerous ol ‘ 
its genus within the United States. It penetrates 
into the interior of the country up our large rivers, 
their head waters. It m.ay be said to line the sea-e'^^’j^ 
from Georgia to Canada. In some parts 1 have conutf 
at one view, more than twenty of their nests "'Ibji 
half a mile. Mr Gardiner informs me, that, on the si" ^ 
island on which he resides, there are at least “ 
hundred nests of fish-hawks that have young, wl"'.^’ 
on an average, consume probably not less than 
hundred fish daily.” Before they (lepart in the auti"?^’ 
they regularly repair their nests, carrying up 
sods, &c. fortifying them against the violence of * ^ 
winter storms, which, from this circumstance, j, 
would seem to foresee and expect. But, iiotwitlistai'^ 
ing all their precautions, they frequcntl_y, on their ref^'^f 
in spring, find them lying in ruins around the i'""**,|jf 
the tree ; and sometimes the tree itself has shared 
same fate. When a number of hawks, to the ani"'^ 
of twenty or upwards, collect togchlier on one t' 
making a loud squeeling noise, there is generally » 
built soon after on the same tree. Probably this i 
gressioual assembly tvero settling the right of 
pair to the premises ; or it might be a kind of wedoi i 
