86 
FALCO HYEMALIS. 
He is a dexterous frog catcher ; and, that he may 
pursue his profession with full effect, takes up his 
winter residence almost entirely among our meadows 
and marshes. He sometimes stuffs himself so enor- 
mously with these reptiles, that the prominency of his 
craw makes a large hunch, and he appears to fly with 
difficulty. I have taken the broken fragments, and 
whole carcasses of ten frogs, of different dimensions, 
from the crop of a single individual. Of his genius and 
other exploits, I am unable to say much. He appears 
to be a fearless and active bird, silent, and not very shy. 
One which I kept for some time, and which was slightly 
wounded, disdained all attempts made to reconcile him 
to confinement; and would not suffer a person to 
approach without being highly irritated, throwing 
himself backward, and striking, with expanded talons, 
with great fury. Though shorter winged than some of 
his tribe, yet I have no doubt, but, with proper care, 
he might be trained to strike nobler game, in a bold 
style, and with great effect. But the education of 
hawks in this country may well be postponed for a 
time, until fewer improvements remain to be made in 
that of the human subject. 
Length of the winter hawk twenty inches ; extent 
forty-one inches, or nearly three feet six inches ; cere 
and legs, yellow, the latter long, and feathered for an 
inch below the knee ; bill, bluish black, small, furnished 
with a tooth in the upper mandible ; eye, bright amber, 
cartilage over the eye, very prominent, and of a dull 
green ; head, sides of the neck, and throat, dark brown, 
streaked with white ; lesser coverts with a strong glow 
of ferruginous; secondaries, pale brown, indistinctly 
barred with darker ; primaries, brownish orange, spotted 
with black, wholly black at the tips ; tail, long, slightly 
rounded, barred alternately with dark and pale brown ; 
inner vanes, white, exterior feathers, brownish orange ; 
wings, when closed, reach rather beyond the middle of 
the tail ; tail coverts, white, marked with heart- 
shaped spots of brown, breast and belly, white, with 
numerous long drops of brown, the shafts blackish ; 
