RED-TAILED HAWK. 
281 
to breed ; approaching the habitations of man, like other 
thieves and plunderers, with shy and cautious jealousy ; seldom 
permitting a near advance ; subject to great changes of plu- 
mage; and, since the decline of falconry, seldom or never 
domesticated, — offer to those who wish eagerly to investigate 
their history, and to delineate their particular character and 
manners, great and insurmountable difficulties. Little more 
can be done in such cases than to identify the species, and 
trace it through the various quarters of the world where it has 
been certainly met with. 
The Red-tailed Hawk is most frequently seen in the lower 
parts of Pennsylvania during the severity of winter. Among 
the extensive meadows that border the Schuylkill and Dela- 
ware, below Philadelphia, where flocks of larks, (Alauda 
magna ,) and where mice and moles are in great abundance, 
many individuals of this Hawk spend the greater part of the 
winter. Others prowl around the plantations, looking out for 
vagrant chickens ; their method of seizing which is, by sweep- 
ing swiftly over the spot, and, grappling them with their 
talons, bear 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 squealing 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 
