402 
BLUE HAWK, OR HEN-HARRIER. 
are tolerably common ; as if the parents sent their children on 
a tour to finish their education, then to return and marry, and 
remain contentedly at home. The specimen here figured was 
shot on Long Island, and was preserved in Scudder’s Mu- 
seum, New York. 
Its total length is eighteen inches, breadth forty-one ; the 
bill, bluish black ; cere, irides, and feet, yellow ; claws, black. 
The plumage above is bluish ashy, much darker on the scapu- 
lars, and, with the feather-shafts, blackish; beneath, white, 
slightly cream-coloured on the breast ; the belly, flanks, and 
lower tail-coverts, with small arrow-shaped spots of yellowish 
rusty ; the long axillary feathers are crossed with several such 
spots, taking the appearance of bands ; the upper tail-coverts 
are pure white; the primaries, dusky blackish at the point, 
edged with paler, and somewhat hoary on the outer vane ; at 
base, white internally and beneath. The tail is altogether of 
a paler ash than the body, tipped with whitish, and with a broad 
blackish subterminal band ; all the tail-feathers are pure white 
at their origin under the coverts, the lateral being sub-banded 
with blackish and white on their inner vanes, and the outer on 
the greater part of the outer web also ; the shafts are varied 
with black and white. 
The hen-harrier’s favourite haunts are rich and extensive 
plains, and low grounds. Though preferring open and cham- 
paign countries, and seeming to have an antipathy to forests, 
which it always shuns, it does not, like the ash-coloured har- 
rier, confine itself to marshes, but is also seen in dry countries, 
if level. We are informed by Wilson, that it is much esteemed 
by the southern planters, for the services it renders in prevent- 
ing the depredations of the rice-birds upon their crops. Cau- 
tious and vigilant, it is not only by the facial disk that this bird 
approaches the owls, but also by a habit of chasing in the morn- 
ing and evening, at twilight, and occasionally at night, when 
the moon shines. Falconers reckon it among the ignoble 
hawks. Cruel, though cowardly, it searches every where for 
