38 
THE HAWK OWL. 
out exciting violent gestures and screams. Though of dif- 
ferent sexes, and confined to the same cage, they contracted 
no friendship for each other which might soothe their impri- 
sonment, and finally, to end the dismal picture, the female, 
in a fit of indiscriminate rage and violence, murdered her 
mate in the silence of the night, when all the other feathered 
race were wrapped in repose. Indeed their dispositions are 
so furious, that a Goshawk, left with any other falcons, 
soon effects the destruction of the whole. Their ordinary 
food is young rabbits, squirrels, mice, moles, young geese, 
pigeons, and small birds, and, with a cannibal appetite, they 
sometimes even prey upon the young of their own species. 
They construct their nests in the highest trees, and lay from 
two to four eggs of a bluish-white, marked with lines and 
spots of brown. The egg of our bird, according to Audu- 
bon, is without spots. 
% 
THE HAWK OWL . — (Strix funerea.) 
This remarkable species, says Mr. Nuttall, forming a con- 
necting link with the preceding genus of the Hawks, is 
nearly confined to the arctic wilds of both continents, being 
frequent in Siberia and the fur countries from Hudson’s 
Bay to the Pacific. A few stragglers, now and then, at dis- 
tant intervals, and in the depths of winter, penetrate on the 
