Younger. Similar, but with the beautiful soft purplish-bronzed black of shoulders and back less conspicuously different from the more metallic tints of other upper parts. Young (youngest? 18,457, Cantonment Burgwyn, New Mexico). The black above less slaty, with a brownish cast, and with a quite decided gloss of bottle-green; secondaries, primary coverts, primaries, and tail-feathers finely margined terminally with white. Feathers of the head and neck with fine shaft-lines of black.
Hab. Whole of South and Middle America, and southern United States; very rarely northward on Atlantic coast to Pennsylvania; along the Mississippi Valley to Minnesota and Wisconsin; breeding in Iowa (Sioux City) and Illinois; exceedingly abundant in August in southern portion of the latter State; Cuba; accidental in England.
Localities: Guatemala (Scl. Ibis. I, 217); Cuba (Cab. Journ. II, lxxxiii); Brazil (Cab. Journ. V, 41); Panama (Lawr. VII, 1861, 289); N. Texas (Dresser, Ibis, 1865, 325, common, breeding); Veragua (Salv. 1867, 158); Costa Rica (Lawr. IX, 134); Minnesota (thirty miles north of Mille Lac, lat. 47°; Trippe, Birds of Minn., Pr. Essex Inst. VI, 1871, p. 113).
A pair marked as from England (56,099, ♀, and 56,100, ♂, “in England geschossen”; Schlüter Collection) are smaller than the average of American skins, the female measuring, wing, 15.50; tail, 13.00. The colors of this female, however, are as in American examples. The male has the plumage somewhat different from anything we have seen in the small series of American specimens. The whole upper parts are a polished violaceous slaty-black, this covering the back and lesser wing-coverts, as well as other upper parts. Were a large series of American specimens examined, individuals might perhaps be found corresponding in all respects with the pair in question.
LIST OF SPECIMENS EXAMINED.
National Museum, 9; Philadelphia Academy, 3; New York Museum, 4 (Brazil); Boston Society, 1; Cambridge Museum, 2; Cab. G. N. Lawrence, 3; Coll. R. Ridgway, 1. Total, 23.
Nauclerus forficatus.
Habits. The Swallow-tailed Hawk has an extended distribution in the eastern portion of North America. It is irregularly distributed; in a large part of the country it occurs only occasionally and in small numbers, and is probably nowhere abundant except in the southwestern Gulf States, or along the rivers and inland waters. On the Atlantic coast it has been traced, according to Mr. Lawrence, as far north as New York City. According to Mr. Nuttall, individuals have been seen on the Mississippi as far as St. Anthony’s Falls, in latitude 44°. It is found more or less common along the tributaries of the Ohio and Mississippi, where it is essentially a prairie bird, and breeds in Southern Wisconsin, in Iowa, Nebraska, and Kansas, and throughout Illinois. It has been taken in Cuba, and occasionally also in Jamaica. It is found in Central America, and in South America to Northern Brazil, Buenos Ayres, and, according to Vieillot, to Peru. It nests in South Carolina and in all the States that border on the Gulf of Mexico, frequenting the banks of rivers, but is not found near the seaboard.
Mr. Thure Kumlien noticed a pair of these Hawks in the neighborhood of Fort Atkinson, Wis., in the summer of 1854, and had no doubt they were breeding, though he was not able to find their nest.