RED-TAILED HAWK. 
83 
was surprised in the act of feeding* on a hen he had just 
killed, and which he was compelled to abandon. The 
remains of the chicken were immediately baited to a 
steel trap, and early the next morning the unfortunate 
red-tail was found a prisoner, securely fastened by the 
leg. The same hen, which the day before he had 
massacred, was, the very next, made the means of 
decoying him to his destruction, — in the eye of the 
farmer a system of fair and just retribution. 
This species inhabits the whole United States, and, 
I believe, is not migratory, as I found it, in the month 
of May, as far south as Fort Adams, in the Mississippi 
territory. The young were, at that time, nearly as 
large as their parents, and w ere very clamorous, making 
an incessant squealing noise. One, which I shot, con- 
tained in its stomach mingled fragments of frogs and 
lizards. 
The red-tailed hawk is twenty inches long, and three 
feet nine inches in extent; bill, blue black; cere, 
and sides of the mouth, yellow, tinged with green; 
lores, and spot on the under eyelid, white, the former 
marked with fine radiating hairs ; eyebrow, or cartilage, 
a dull eel-skin colour, prominent, projecting over the 
eye ; a broad streak of dark brown extends from the 
sides of the mouth backwards ; crown and hind head, 
dark brown, seamed with white, and ferruginous ; sides 
of the neck, dull ferruginous, streaked with brown ; 
eye, large ; iris, pale amber ; back and shoulders, deep 
brown ; wings, dusky, barred with blackish ; ends of 
the five first primaries nearly black ; scapulars, barred 
broadly w ith white and brown ; sides of the tail coverts, 
white, barred with ferruginous, middle ones dark, edged 
with rust ; tail, rounded, extending two inches beyond 
the wings, and of a bright red brown, with a single band 
of black near the end, and tipt with brownish white ; 
on some of the lateral feathers are slight indications 
of the remains of other* narrow bars ; lower parts, 
brownish white ; the breast, ferruginous, streaked with 
dark brown; across the belly, a band of interrupted 
spots of brown ; chin, white ; femorals and vent, pain 
