RED-SHOULDERED HAWK. 
291 
occasionally observed this bird near Egg Harbour, in New 
Jersey, and once in the meadows below this city. This Hawk 
was first transmitted to Great Britain by Mr Blackburne, 
from Long Island, in the state of New York. With its 
manner of building, eggs, &c. we are altogether unacquainted. 
The Red-shouldered Hawk is nineteen inches in length ; the 
head and back are brown, seamed and edged with rusty ; bill, 
blue black ; cere and legs, yellow ; greater wing-coverts and 
secondaries, pale olive brown, thickly spotted on both vanes 
with white and pale rusty ; primaries, very dark, nearly black, 
and barred or spotted with white ; tail, rounded, reaching 
about an inch and a half beyond the wings, black, crossed by 
five bands of white, and broadly tipt with the same ; whole 
breast and belly, bright rusty, speckled and spotted with 
transverse rows of white, the shafts black ; chin and cheeks, 
pale brownish, streaked also with black ; iris, reddish hazel ; 
vent, pale ochre, tipt with rusty ; legs, feathered a little below 
the knees, long ; these and the feet, a fine yellow ; claws, 
black ; femorals, pale rusty, faintly barred with a darker tint. 
In the month of April I shot a female of this species, and 
the only one I have yet met with, in a swamp, seven or eight 
miles below Philadelphia. The eggs were, some of them, 
nearly as large as peas ; from which circumstance, I think it 
probable they breed in such solitary parts even in this state. 
In colour, size, and markings, it differed very little from the 
male described above. The tail was scarcely quite so black, 
and the white bars not so pure ; it was also something larger. 
where, on the contrary, the Winter Falcon usually makes its appearance from 
the north at the approach of autumn. “ It is one of the most noisy of its genus, 
during spring especially, when it would be difficult to walk the skirts of woods 
bordering a large plantation, without hearing its discordant shrill notes, ka-hee s 
ka-hee, as it sails in rapid circles at a very great elevation. The interior of 
the woods seems the fittest haunts for the Red-shouldered Hawk, where they 
also breed. The nest is seated near the extremity of a large branch, and is as 
bulky as that of a common Crow. It is formed externally of dry sticks and 
Spanish moss, and is lined with withered grass and fibrous roots. The female 
lays four eggs, sometimes five ; they are of a broad oval form, granulated all 
over, pale blue, faintly blotched with brownish red at the smaller end.”— Ed. 
