MARSH HAWK. 
113 
This Hawk is particularly serviceable to the rice fields of the 
southern states, by the havock it makes among the clouds of 
Rice Buntings, that spread such devastation among that grain, 
in its early stage. As it sails low and swiftly, over the surface 
of the field, it keeps the fiocks in perpetual fluctuation, and 
greatly interrupts their depredations. The planters consider 
one Marsh Hawk to be equal to several negroes, for alarming 
the Rice-birds. Formerly the Marsh Hawk used to be nume- 
rous along the Schuylkill and Delaware, during the time the 
seeds of the Zizania were ripening, and the Reed-birds abun- 
dant; but they have of late years become less numerous here. 
Pennant considers the strong, thick, and short legs” of 
this species as specific distinctions from the Ring-tailed Hawk; 
the legs, however, are long and slender; and a Marsh Hawk 
such as he has described, with strong, thick and short legs, is 
no where to be found in the United States. 
Note — Montagu, in the ‘‘Supplement to the Ornithological 
Dictionary,” an excellent work, positively asserts, that the F. 
cyaneus, and the F. pygargus, are the same species. This opi- 
nion the same writer had given in a paper, published in the ninth 
volume of the Linnean Transactions. If this be the fact, the 
name oi pygargus must be retained for the species, it being that 
which was given to it by Linnseus, in the tenth edition of the 
Sy sterna Naturae, published in the year 1758. — G. Ord. 
VOL. I. — E r 
