A History of North American Birds; Land Birds; Vol. 3 of 3

by Spencer Fullerton Baird; T. M. Brewer; Robert Ridgway

Nisus fuscus.

Dr. Woodhouse, who frequently observed this bird skimming over the prairies while in search of its prey, states that its flight is so peculiar that there is no difficulty in recognizing it, when taken in connection with its form, short wings, and long tail, being very swift and irregular in its movements, first high in the air, then close to the ground, suddenly disappearing among the grass when it has seized the object of which it was in pursuit.

Mr. Dresser met with this Hawk in Texas, but nowhere south or west of San Antonio, where it remains through the breeding-season, nesting in the dense cedar-thickets.

Mr. Audubon regarded it as the very miniature of the Goshawk, in its irregular, swift, vigorous, varied, and yet often undecided, manner of flight, and on occasion greatly protracted. When in search of its prey, it is said to pass over the country, now at a moderate height, now close over the land, and with a surprising swiftness. It advances by sudden dashes, and pounces upon the object of its pursuit so suddenly as to render hopeless any attempt to escape. It has frequently been known to seize and kill a bird so large that it was unable to carry it, and had to drop to the ground with it. In one instance Mr. Audubon saw it strike a Brown Thrush, which it had darted into a thicket of briers to seize, emerging at the opposite side. As Mr. Audubon ran up, the Hawk attempted twice to rise with its prey, but was unable to carry it off, and relinquished it. The Thrush was quite dead, and had evidently been killed instantly.

Mr. Downes, of Halifax, who speaks of this Hawk as common in Nova Scotia, breeding all over that province, adds that it does not molest the poultry-yards, being too weak to attack large prey. But this is not universally the case. They are frequently destructive both to dove-cots and to the younger inhabitants of the poultry-yard. Mr. Nuttall narrates that in the thinly settled parts of Alabama and Georgia it seemed to abound, and was very destructive to young chickens, a single one having been known to come regularly every day until it had carried off twenty or thirty. He was eyewitness to one of its acts of robbery, where, at noonday and in the near presence of the farmer, the Hawk descended and carried off one of the chickens. In another instance the same writer mentions that one of these Hawks, descending with blind eagerness upon its prey, broke through the glass of the greenhouse at the Cambridge Botanic Garden, fearlessly passed through a second glass partition, and was only brought up by a third, when it was caught, though very little injured.

At times this Hawk is seen to fly high, in a desultory manner, with quick but irregular movements of the wings, now moving in short and unequal circles, pausing to examine the objects below, and then again descending rapidly and following a course only a few feet from the ground, carefully examining each patch of small bushes in search of small birds.

Besides the smaller birds, young chickens, and pigeons, this Hawk has been known to occasionally feed on small reptiles and insects, as also upon the smaller quadrupeds.

Mr. Audubon speaks of having met with three nests of this species, and all in different situations. One was in a hole in a rock on the banks of the Ohio River; another was in the hollow of a broken branch, near Louisville, Ky., and the third in the forks of a low oak, near Henderson, Ky. In the first case, the nest was slight, and simply constructed of a few sticks and some grasses, carelessly interwoven, and about two feet from the entrance of the hole. In the second instance there was no nest whatever, but in the third the birds were engaged in the construction of an elaborate nest. The number of the eggs was four in one instance, and five in another. He describes them as almost equally rounded at both ends; their ground-color white, with a livid tinge, but scarcely discernible amid the numerous markings and blotches of reddish-chocolate with which they were irregularly covered. In a nest which was large and elaborately constructed of sticks, and contained five eggs, found by Dr. H. R. Storer in Concord, Mass., there was a single egg which nearly corresponds with this description. It is, however, the only one among many specimens that at all agrees with it. This specimen is a little more than usually elongate, and its ground-color, which is a purplish-white, is nearly concealed by its blotches of various shades of sepia-brown. In every other instance the egg is very nearly spherical, the ground-color white, and beautifully marked with large confluent blotches of sepia, varying in depth from quite a light to a very dark shade. In one, these confluent markings form a broad belt around the centre of the egg. In others, they are chiefly distributed about the larger end. The contrast between the white ground and the dark confluent dashes of brown is very striking. Except in size, the eggs of this bird bear a marked resemblance to those of the Sparrow Hawk of Europe. In a few instances, the brown markings have an intermixture of red and purple. The egg measures 1.35 by 1.15 inches.

In nearly every instance the nest of this Hawk has been constructed in trees. It is usually large in proportion to the size of the bird, and its materials are somewhat elaborately put together; it is composed chiefly of large sticks and twigs, and the whole platform is covered with a thin lining of dry leaves, mosses, grass, etc. Mr. John Krider, of Philadelphia, found a nest in New Jersey, in the vicinity of that city, which was built on the edge of a high rock.