378 ROUGH-LEGGED FALCON.
salt-marshes, along our bays and inlets. In such places you may see it
perched on a stake, where it remains for hours at a time, unless some
wounded bird comes in sight, when it sails after it, and secures it without
manifesting much swiftness of flight. It feeds principally on moles, mice,
and other small quadrupeds, and never attacks a duck on the wing, although
now and then it pursues a wounded one. When not alarmed, it
usually flies low and sedately, and does not exhibit any of the courage
and vigour so conspicuous in most other hawks, suffering thousands of
birds to pass without pursuing them. The greatest feat I have seen them
perform was scrambling at the edge of the water, to secure a lethargic frog.
They alight on trees to roost, but appear so hungry or indolent at
all times, that they seldom retire to rest until after dusk. Their large
eyes indeed, seem to indicate their possession of the faculty of seeing at
that late hour. I have frequently put up one, that seemed watching for
food at the edge of a ditch, long after sunset. Whenever an opportunity
offers, they eat to excess, and, like the Turkey Buzzards and Carrion
Crows, disgorge their food, to enable them to fly off. The species is
more nocturnal in its habits than any other Hawk found in the United
States.
Nothing is known respecting their propagation in the United States,
and as I have no desire to compile, I must pass over this subject. They
leave us in the beginning of March, and betake themselves to more northern
countries ; yet not one did either myself, or my youthful and enterprising
party, observe on my late rambles in Labrador.
I have given you the figure of what I suppose to have been a middleaged
bird, and will at another time place before you one of the darkcoloured
kind, known by the name of Fdlco niger, but which I consider
as the old bird of the present species.
However highly I esteem the labours of WILSON, I am here compelled
to differ from him. How that accurate observer made two different
species of the young and the adult Rough-legged Falcon, I cannot
well understand, more especially as his description of Falco lagopus and
F. niger are so similar, that one might infer from their comparison that
they referred to the same species.
Of Falco lagopus he says:—" The Rough-legged Hawk measures
twenty-two inches in length, and four feet two inches in extent; cere,
sides of the mouth, and feet, rich yellow ; legs feathered to the toes, with
brownish-yellow plumage, streaked with brown; fcmorals the same; toes
ROUGH-LEGGED FALCON. 379
comparatively short; claws and bill blue-black; iris of the eye bright
amber; upper part of the head pale ochre, streaked with brown; back
and wings chocolate, each feather edged with bright ferruginous; first
four primaries nearly black about the tips, edged externally with silvery
in some lights; rest of the quills dark chocolate; lower, side, and interior
vanes white; tail-coverts white; tail rounded, white, with a broad band
of dark brown near the end, and tipt with white; body below, and breast,
light yellow ochre, blotched and streaked with chocolate. What constitutes
a characteristic mark of this bird, is a belt or girdle of very dark
brown, passing round the belly just below the breast, and reaching under
the wings to the rump; head very broad, and bill uncommonly small,
suited to the humility of its prey.
" The female is much darker both above and below, particularly in
the belt or girdle, which is nearly black ; the tail-coverts are also spotted
with chocolate ; she is also something larger.
" The Black Hawk is twenty-one inches long, and four feet two inches
in extent; bill bluish-black; cere and sides of the mouth orange-yellow;
feet the same; eye very large ; iris bright hazel; cartilage overhanging
the eye prominently, of a dull greenish colour; general colour above
brown-black, slightly dashed with dirty white; nape of the neck pure
white under the surface; front white; whole lower parts black, with
slight tinges of brown; and a few circular touches of the same on the
femorals; legs feathered to the toes, and black, touched with brownish ;
the wings reach rather beyond the tip of the tail; the five first primaries
are white on their inner vanes ; tail rounded at the end, deep black,
crossed with five narrow bands of pure white, and broadly tipped with
dull white; vent black, spotted with white ; inside vanes of the primaries
snowy ; claws black, strong, and sharp ; toes remarkably short."
I have frequently examined the very specimen from which W I L SON
took his figure of the Falco niger, and which is now in the collection
of the Academy of Natural Sciences at Philadelphia. On comparing
it with specimens of the Rough-legged Falcon in its ordinary
states, I could discover no essential differences, nor, in fact, any excepting
such as have reference to colour, a circumstance or quality which in
hawks is known to vary so much in almost every species at different periods
of their lives, that it would be useless for me to offer any remarks
on the subject. Besides this, WILSON'S figure is by no means correct as
to colouring, it being in fact black, in contradiction to his description. I