Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 51.djvu/612

596 keeps more to the woods than the redtail, and is much less destructive; his cries are shorter, shriller, and less savage, and his general disposition is milder. In the spring they are especially noisy, and then several pairs may sometimes be seen circling together high in air, all whistling and screaming at the same time.

Occasionally a pair will remain all winter, and during this season they will keep to the thickest parts of the woods and loaf about open springs, feeding on such half-dormant frogs as rise to the surface of the water. They never appear to suffer from want of food, however, as all those I have killed in winter had a thick layer of fat under the skin.

Although the rough-legged hawk is usually spoken of as rare in this part of the country, they seem to be common enough here in southeastern New Hampshire, at certain seasons at least; and during the Indian-summer weather that comes just before winter sets in, I can at almost any time find one or more without the least trouble. Perhaps it is because they are here at a season when other birds—and hawks in particular—are most conspicuous by their absence that this species is so well known; still, there seems to be something different in their method of flight and ways in general. One peculiarity the rough-legged hawk shares with the little sparrow hawk—that of hanging like a wind-hover in midair, head to the wind, with dangling legs, his keen eyes watching the grass beneath for any sign of a mouse. With a continual rolling flap of the wings he holds himself, hour after hour, over precisely the same spot. At the first glimpse of a mouse he goes down with a perpendicular rush like a falcon, and flounders and flaps around until he has the little victim in his claws.

Judging from my own experience I should consider this the most intelligent of hawks. With the utmost caution I find it almost impossible to approach within two hundred yards when I