Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 5.djvu/273

Rh men for preservation, which I exceedingly regret, as I am sure the species is yet undescribed. I have since fired at many of them with every kind of smaller shot, but without effect. Seldom more than one or two of these Buzzards are seen together; but when they can find the carcass of any dead animal, they gorge so gluttonously that it is easy to knock them down with a stick. I shall shortly try to take them with a baited steel trap. The color of this species is similar to the Canadian Buzzard which I sent home, the beak and legs bright yellow. Its wing-feathers are highly prized by the Canadian voyagers for making the stems of their tobacco pipes.

Of the Hawk tribe I have seen but four species, and was able to preserve only two of these. One is pure white, and about the size of a sparrow-hawk, a very active bird, and in constant pursuit of all the other sorts, which invariably shun its society.

The Magpie, so common with us, and abundant also in the upper part of the country at all seasons, is very rare near the crast: there seems to be no specific difference between it and the bird of Europe, except that this is larger, and the feathers in the toil of the male are of a brighter and more azure purple. The American Magpies have the same trick as ours of annoying horses which have any sore about them. I preserved a pair of them.

The Wood Partridge is not a rare bird, although by no means so abundant as many of the tribe on the other side of the continent. These birds frequent high gravelly soils on the outskirts of woods, among hazel bushes and other brushwood; but are so shy that the breaking of a twig is sufficient to raise them, as they generally harbor in the low thickets it is only by a chance shot on the wing that they can be secured. I preserved two pairs of this fine species, but had the misfortune to lose one of the males, which could not afterwards be replaced, by the depredations of a rascally rat, who mutilated it so much as to render the specimen unfit for sending home. On the Multnomak River there is a species of