RED-TAILED HAWK. 
83 
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 immediately baited to a steel- 
trap, and early the next morning the unfortunate 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 
clamorous, 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; eye- 
brow, or cartilage, a dull eel skin colour, 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 fer- 
ruginous, 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, streaked with dark 
brown; across the belly a band of interrupted spots of brown; 
