Page:Ornithological biography, or an account of the habits of the birds of the United States of America, vol 2.djvu/414

378 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, al- though 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 vicrour 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 noctuinial 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 nor- thern countries ; yet not one did either myself, or my youthful and en- terprising party, observe on my late rambles in Labrador.

I have given you the figure of what I suppose to have been a middle- aged bird, and will at another time place before you one of the dark- coloured kind, known by the name of Fulco niger, but which I consider as the old bird of the present species.

However highly I esteem the labours of Wilson, I am here com- pelled to differ from him. How that accurate observer made two diffe- rent species of the young and the adult Rough-legged Falcon, I cannot well understand, more especially as his description of Falco logopus 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 yeUow; legs feathered to the toes, with brownish-yellow plumage, streaked with brown; femorals the same; toes