MARSH HAWK. 
109 
hovering over the marsh during the whole of our stay, and probably had a 
nest thereabout. It is rather a cowardly bird, however, for on several 
occasions when I was in the Floridas, where it is abundant, I saw it chase 
a Salt-water Marsh Hen, Rullus crepitans , which courageously sprung up, 
and striking at its enemy, forced it off. My friend John Bachman has 
frequently observed similar occurrences in the neighbourhood of Charles- 
ton. Whenever it seizes a bird on wing, it almost at once drops to the 
ground with it, and if in an exposed place, hops off with its prey to the 
nearest concealment. 
In autumn, after the young have left their parents, they hunt in packs. 
This I observed on several occasions when on my way back from Labrador. 
In Nova Scotia, on the 27th of August, we procured nearly a whole pack, 
by concealing ourselves, but did not see an adult male. These birds are 
fond of searching for prey over the same fields, removing from one planta- 
tion to another, and returning with a remarkable degree of regularity, and 
this apparently for a whole season, if not a longer period. My friend 
John Bachman observed a beautiful old male, which had one of its 
primaries cut short by a shot, regularly return to the same rice-field during 
the whole of the autumn and winter, and believes that the same individual 
revisits the same spot annually. When satiated with food, the Marsh 
Hawk may be seen perched on a fence-stake for more than an hour, stand- 
ing motionless. On horseback I have approached them on such occasions 
near enough to see the colour of their eyes, before they would reluctantly 
open their wings, and remove to another stake not far distant, where they 
would probably remain until digestion was accomplished. 
I have never seen this species searching for food in the dusk. Indeed, 
in our latitudes, when the orb of day has withdrawn from our sight, the 
twilight is so short, and the necessity of providing a place of safety for 
the night so imperious in birds that are not altogether nocturnal, that I 
doubt whether the Marsh Hawk, which has perhaps been on wing the 
greater part of the day, and has had many opportunities of procuring food, 
would continue its flight for the sake of the scanty fare which it might 
perchance procure at a time when few birds are abroad, and when 
quadrupeds only are awakening from their daily slumber. 
Wilson must have been misinformed by some one acquainted with the 
arrival and departure of this species, as well as of the Rice Bird, in South 
Carolina, when he was induced to say that the Marsh Hawk “is particularly 
serviceable to the rice-fields of the Southern States, by the havoc it makes 
among the clouds of Rice Buntings that spread such devastation among the 
grain, in its early stages. As it sails low, and swiftly, over the surface of 
the field, it keeps the flocks in perpetual fluctuation, and greatly interrupts 
