88 
BIRDS OF PREY. 
would be found more sanguinary and pugnacious than 
the present. The young bird is described by Pennant 
under the name of the dubious Falcon, and he remarks 
its affinity to the European Sparrow-Hawk. It is, how- 
ever, somewhat less, differently marked on the head, and 
much more broadly and faintly barred below. The nest 
of our species is yet unknown. It probably, like its 
European prototype, builds in hollow trees, or conceals 
its eyry among rocks. The true Sparrow-Hawk shows 
considerable docility, is easily trained to hunt Partridges 
and Quails ; and makes great destruction among Pigeons, 
young poultry, and small birds of all kinds. In the 
winter they migrate from Europe into Barbary and 
Greece, and are seen in great numbers out at sea, mak- 
ing such havock among the birds of passage they hap- 
pen to meet in their way, that the sailors in the Mediter- 
ranean call them Corsairs. Wilson observed the female 
of our species descend upon its prey with great velocity 
in a sort of zig-zag pounce, after the manner of the Gos- 
hawk. Descending furiously and blindly upon its quarry, 
a young Hawk of this species broke through the glass of 
the green-house, at the Cambridge Botanic Garden ; and 
fearlessly passing through a second glass partition, he 
was only brought up by the third, and caught, though 
little stunned by the effort. His wing-feathers were much 
torn by the glass, and his flight in this way so impeded 
as to allow of his being approached. This species feeds 
principally upon mice, lizards, small birds, and some- 
times even squirrels. In the thinly settled states of 
Georgia and Alabama, this Hawk seems to abound, and 
proves extremely destructive to young chickens, a single 
bird having been known regularly to come every day un- 
til he had carried away between 20 and 30. At noon-day, 
while I was conversing with a planter, one of these Hawks 
