176 
BIRDS OF NEW MEXICO 
State Records. —While engaged on the Mexican Boundary Survey, Mearns 
collected a Mexican Black Hawk, July 7, 1892, in the San Luis Mountains of New 
Mexico, and four days previously had taken another at Cajon Bonito, a few miles 
to the southward in Sonora; so it is probable that they are regular visitants to the 
districts as they are known to be to the neighboring parts of southeastern Arizona. 
[Mr. Ligon has seen specimens taken on the Gila River east of Cliff, where he is 
quite sure that they nest; while Mr. Kellogg has a specimen taken on the Gila in 
the summer of 1918 and found a pair nesting in a cottonwood grove on the Gila, 
20 miles west of Silver City, May 29, 1921.] Ligon reports a specimen taken 20 
miles east of Silver City, October 3, 1915.—W. W. Cooke. 
Nest. —In a large tree near water, or in a cup in rock, bulky; made of sticks and 
herbage, lined*with leaves. Eggs: Usually 2, white, irregularly blotched with 
brown, chiefly around the larger end. 
Food. —Reptiles, fish (occasionally), small mammals, crustaceans, and insects. 
General Habits. —The Black Hawk needs to be carefully dis¬ 
tinguished from the black Zone-tailed, as the tail patterns are similar. 
It has a cry which Major Bendire compares to the spring piping of the 
Long-billed Curlew (1892, p. 248), and has been found by Doctor Mearns 
along a river “hidden in the foliage near the water” (in Bendire, 1892, 
p. 249). 
In British Honduras, Mr. G. B. Thomas found it abundant in “the 
long stretches of sand dunes and savannas studded here and there by 
clumps of palmetto and gnarled pines,” after sundown flying about 
catching the huge land crabs that abound there (1908, p. 117). 
GOLDEN EAGLE: Aquila chrysaetos (Linnaeus) 
Plates 9 and 13 
Description. — Male: Length about 30-35 inches, wing 23-24.7, extent about 
6 K to 7 feet, tail 14-15, bill 1.5-1.6, tarsus 3.0-3.8. Female: Length about 35-40 
inches, wing 25-27, extent about 7-7'A feet, tail 15-16, bill 1.7-1.8, tarsus 4.1-4.2. 
Bill robust; wing with five quills strikingly cut out. Legs feathered to toes . Adults: 
Dark brown with loose, lanceolate feathers of back of head and hind neck tawny , or 
“ golden ” brown; quills and tail blackish, basally more or less clouded or banded 
with gray; flight feathers nearly black, iris brown, bill bluish horn or blackish, cere, 
legs and feet, yellow. Young: Much darker (almost black) below, tail with black 
border and basal half to two-thirds plain white. 
Comparisons. —In flight the juvenal Golden Eagle is hard to distinguish at a 
distance from the young Bald Eagle, showing as a black bird with a black-bordered 
white tail and prominent white patch at base of primaries, visible on both upper 
and lower surfaces (Taverner); “in flight seems like a big Buteo circling upward 
often to great heights . . . usually shows whitish area on underside of each wing 
toward end” (Forbush). (See Plate 9.) 
Range.— Northern part of Northern Hemisphere, south in the Old World to 
North Africa and the Himalaya Mountains. In America breeds from northern 
Alaska, northwestern Mackenzie, and northern Quebec south to North Carolina, 
Ontario, western Texas, central Mexico, and middle Lower California; winters to 
Florida, Alabama, and (rarely) southern Texas, and Lower California. 
