102 
SHARP-SHIKNED OR SLATE-COLOURED HAWK. 
too heavy to be carried off, it drops to the ground with it, and, being close 
by, I have forced it to desist from committing .further mischief, as it fears 
man quite as much as its poor quarry dreads itself. One of these occur- 
rences, which happened in the neighbourhood of Charleston, in South 
Carolina, is thus related in my journal. 
Whilst walking one delightful evening in autumn, along tire fine hedge- 
row formed by the luxuriant Rocky Mountain rose-bushes, I observed a 
mate of this species alighted in an upright position on the top bar of a 
fence opposite to me. I marked it with particular attention, to see what 
might follow. The Hawk saw me as plainly as I did him, and kept peeping 
now at me and now at some part of the hedge opposite, when suddenly, and 
with the swiftness of an arrow, it shot past me, entered the briars, and the 
next instant was moving off with a Brown Thrush, Turdus rufus , in its 
talons. The Thrush, though seized by the sharp claws of the marauder, 
seemed too heavy for him to carry far, and I saw both falling to the 
ground. On running up, I observed the anxiety of the Hawk as I 
approached, and twice saw it attempt to rise on wing to carry off its 
prize ; but it was .unable to do so, and before it could disengage itself I 
was able to secure both. The Thrush must have been killed almost 
instantaneously, for, on examining it, I found it quite dead. 
My friend Thomas Nut-tall, Esq., tells us that in the “thinly settled 
parts of the States of Geoi'gia and Alabama, this Hawk seems to abound, 
and proves extremely destructive to young chickens, a single one having 
been known regularly to come every day until he had carried away 
between twenty and thirty. At noon-day, while I was conversing with a 
planter, one of these Hawks came down, and without ceremony, or 
heeding the loud cries of the housewife, who most reluctantly witnessed 
the robbery, snatched away a chicken before us.” Again, while speaking 
of the wild and violent manner of this bird, he adds, “descending 
furiously and blindly upon its quarry, a young Hawk of this species, 
broke through the glass of the green-house at the Cambridge Botanic 
Garden ; and fearlessly passing through a second glass partition, he was 
only brought up- by the third, and caught, though little stunned, by the 
effort. His wing-feathers were much torn by the glass, and his flight in 
this way so impeded as to allow of his being approached.” 
Whilst travelling to some distance, the Sharp-shinned Hawk flies high, 
though in a desultory manner, with irregular quick flappings of the wings, 
and at times, as if to pause for awhile and examine the objects below, moves 
in short and unequal circles, after which it is seen to descend rapidly, and 
then follow its course at the height of only a few feet from -the ground, 
visiting as it were evei'y clump of low bushes or briar patches likely to be 
