AMERICAN SPARROW HAWK. 
59 
the first mouse, went up to it, and found it to be almost 
covered with lice, and greatly emaciated ! Here was not 
only delicacy of taste, but sound and prudent reason- 
ing ; — If I carry this to my nest, thought he, it will fill 
it with vermin, and hardly be worth eating. 
The blue jays have a particular antipathy to this bird, 
and frequently insult it by following and imitating its 
notes so exactly, as to deceive even those well acquainted 
with both. In return for all this abuse, the hawk 
contents himself with, now and then, feasting on the 
plumpest of his persecutors, who are, therefore, in 
perpetual dread of him ; and yet, through some strange 
infatuation, or from fear that, if they lose sight of him, 
he may attack them unawares, the sparrow hawk no 
sooner appears than the alarm is given, and the whole 
posse of jays follow. 
The female of this species is eleven inches long, and 
twenty-three from tip to tip of the expanded wings. 
The cere and legs are yellow ; bill blue, tipt with black ; 
space round the eye, greenish blue ; iris, deep dusky ; 
head, bluish ash ; crown, rufous ; seven spots of black 
on a white ground surround the head; whole upper 
parts reddish bay, transversely streaked with black; 
primary and secondary quills, black, spotted on their 
inner vanes with brownish white ; whole lower parts 
yellowish white, marked with longitudinal streaks of 
brown, except the chin, vent, and femoral feathers, 
which are white ; claws, black. 
The male of this species (which is an inch and a half 
shorter, has the shoulder of the wings blue, and also the 
black marks on the head, but is, in other respects, very 
differently marked from the female) will be described 
in the next article, with such other particulars as may 
be thought worthy of communicating. 
