Page:Winter - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/179

Rh some of them. Thinks he has seen this same one sitting a long time upright on a tree, high or low, about his premises, and when at length a hen or this year's chicken had strayed far from the rest, he skimmed along and picked it up without pausing, and bore it off, the chicken not having seen him approaching. He found the hawk caught by one leg and frozen to death in a trap which he had set for mink by a spring and baited with fish.—This one measures nineteen by forty-two inches, and is, according to Wilson and Nuttall, a young Falco lineatus, or red-shouldered hawk. It might as well be called the red or rusty-breasted hawk. According to the &quot;Birds of Long Island,&quot; mine is the old bird.(?) Nuttall says it lives on frogs, crayfish, etc., and does not go far north, not even to Massachusetts, he thought. Its note, Kee-oo. He never saw one soar, at least in winter.

Farmer says that he saw what he calls the common hen hawk, soaring high, with apparently a chicken in its claws, while a young hawk circled beneath, when the former suddenly let drop the chicken. But the young one failing to catch it, he shot down like lightning, and caught and bore off the falling chicken before it reached the earth.

Jan. 12, 1860. I go forth to walk on the Hill at 3  Thermometer about +30°.