HAWKS, EAGLES, KITES: WESTERN RED-TAIL 163 
General Habits. —The name Hen Hawk or Chicken Hawk, which 
is applied locally and indifferently to the Red-tail and other beneficial 
hawks, is responsible for much of the animus that deprives the rodent- 
plagued ranchman of his most efficient friends. Where individual 
hawks are destructive, they may easily be disposed of, but the aggregate 
amount of good a hawk does by destroying ranch pests throughout the 
year should not be forgotten when balancing debits and credits with 
these great sky-circlers, the delight of the field student, be he boy or man. 
Hawk campaigns directed primarily against the injurious Cooper and 
Sharp-shinned Hawks, Mr. McAtee says, are a menace to the beneficial 
hawks, for the small swift, flying ones “rarely are seen by the ordinary 
observer while the larger, more slowly moving, and more beneficial 
Buteos are comparatively easy victims. Thus the result of a Hawk 
campaign is the maximum destruction of the more beneficial species, and 
minimum destruction of, and subsequent freedom of the field, for the 
more injurious types” (1926, pp. 542-544). 
When Mr. Bailey and I were hunting over the juniper and nut pine 
ridges near Santa Rosa we saw two Red-tails circling in the sky, their 
fan-shaped red tails—whose feathers are used, as Mr. Jenson tells us, by 
the Pueblo Indians in their ceremonial dances—identifying them at a 
glance—and looking across to the top of the ridge ahead of us, in the 
highest juniper in sight we discovered a large black mass that proved to 
be their nest. It was about twenty feet from the ground, and on climb¬ 
ing to it Mr. Bailey found that it was made of oak, juniper, and pine 
branches, heavily lined with juniper bark, making a deep soft bed for the 
prospective eggs and young. A piece of cotton-tail lay conveniently on 
the side of the nest. One of the birds saw us at the nest and with com¬ 
plaining cries came straight toward us till close by, when it turned and 
circled overhead. 
A Western Red-tail shot on the lower edge of the yellow pines in 
Santa Clara Canyon on August 31, when eating a ground squirrel, 
illustrated the gradual molt that enables most birds to fly during the 
process. The ten feathers of the tail presented strong contrasts in color. 
The old feathers 2d, 3rd, and 8th—were not only much abraded but 
greatly faded. The bright new feathers—1st, 4th, 6th, 7th, and 9th— 
were almost fully grown, the middle one already a trifle abraded at tip, 
showing the slowness of the molt. Two pinfeathers—5th and 10th— 
had recently replaced the old feathers so that during the growth of the 
new tail, half of the old had been left for use. In the wing the first four 
primaries were fresh, and there was one pinfeather. Two black, melan- 
istic Hawks shot in the Mogollons on October 28 had not entirely 
completed their molt. Their back and wings, in the sun, showed a 
beautiful pinkish purple bloom. 
