46 
FALCO HALIiETUS. 
happens to drop, either on the land or on the water. 
There is a kind of abstemious dignity in this habit of 
the hawk, superior to the gluttonous voracity displayed 
by most other birds of prey, particularly by the bald 
eagle, whose piratical robberies committed on the pre- 
sent species, have been already fully detailed in treating 
of his history. The hawk, however, in his fishing 
pursuits, sometimes mistakes his mark, or overrates his 
strength, by striking fish too large and powerful for 
him to manage, by whom he is suddenly dragged under ; 
and, though lie sometimes succeeds in extricating hiim- 
self, after being taken three or four times down, yet 
oftener both parties perish. The bodies of sturgeon, 
and of several other large fish, with a fish-hawk fast 
grappled in them, have, at different times, been found 
dead on the shore, cast up by the waves. 
The fish-hawk is doubtless the most numerous of all 
its genus within the United Slates. It penetrates far 
into the interior of the country up our large rivers, and 
their head waters. It may be said to line the sea-coast 
from Georgia to Canada. In some parts I have counted, 
at one view, more than twenty of their nests within 
half a mile. Mr Gardiner informs me, that, on the small 
island on which he resides, there are at least “ three 
hundred nests of fish-hawks that have young, which, 
on an average, consume probably not less than six 
hundred fish daily.” Before they depart in the autumn, 
they regularly repair their nests, carrying up sticks, 
sods, & c. fortifying them against the violence of the 
winter storms, which, from this circumstance, they 
Would seem to foresee and expect. But, notwithstand- 
ing all their precautions, they frequently, on their return 
in spring, find them lying in ruins around the roots of 
the tree ; and sometimes the tree itself has shared the 
same fate. When a number of hawks, to the amount 
of twenty or upwards, collect together on one tree, 
making a loud squeeling noise, there is generally a nest 
built soon after on the same tree. Probably this con- 
gressional assembly were settling the right of the new 
pair to the premises ; or it might be a kind of wedding, 
