SLATE-COLOURED HAWK. 
215 
Length, five inches and a quarter ; extent, eight inches ; 
upper parts and sides of the neck, a dark mouse brown, 
obscurely streaked on the back with dusky black; lower 
parts, pale dull yellowish white ; breast, marked with faint 
streaks of brown ; chin and vent, white ; rump, vivid yellow ; 
at each side of the breast, and also on the crown, a spot of 
fainter yellow; this last not observable, without separating 
the plumage ; bill, legs, and wings, black ; lesser coverts, tipt 
with brownish white ; tail-coverts, slate ; the three exterior 
tail-feathers marked on their inner vanes with white ; a touch 
of the same on the upper and lower eyelid. Male and female 
at this season nearly alike. They begin to change about the 
middle of February; and, in four or five weeks, are in their 
slate coloured dress, as represented in the figure referred to. 
SLATE-COLOURED HAWK — FALCO PENNSYLVANICUS. 
Plate XL VI. Fig. 1. 
A CCI PITER PENNS YL PANIC US. — Swainson. * 
Falco velox, Bonap. Synop. p. 29. — Autour a bee sineuse, Temm. PI. Col. 67. 
(young.) — Accipiter Pennsylvanicus, North. Zool. ii. p. 44. 
This elegant and spirited little Hawk is a native of Penn- 
sylvania, and of the Atlantic states generally ; and is now for 
the first time introduced to the notice of the public. It 
frequents the more settled parts of the country, chiefly in 
winter; is at all times a scarce species; flies wide, very 
* It is now satisfactorily ascertained that this, and the Falco velox of the 
last plate, are the same species, the latter representing the plumage of the 
young female. The changes and differences are the same with those of the 
common European Sparrow Hawk, Accipiter nisus. 
This bird most probably extends to the intertropical parts of South America. 
Its occurrence far to the northward is not so common. It was not met with 
by Dr Richardson; and the authority of its existence in the Fur Countries 
rests on a specimen in the Hudson’s Bay Company museum, killed at Moose 
Factory. It very nearly resembles two small species from Mexico, the A. 
fringilloides of Mr Vigors, and one newly characterized by Mr Swainson as 
A. Mexicanus. — Ed. 
