a little while after pounced
It frequently plunges into a thicket after small birds, as if at random, but always with a particular and generally a fatal aim.Though small snakes, mice, and lizards, be favorite morsels with this active bir4? yet we are not to suppose it altogether destitute of delicacy in feeding. It will seldom or Bottes Timberland never eat of any thingchaussures Timberland that it has not itself killed; and even that, if not in good eating order, is sometimes rejected. A very respectable friend informs me, says Wilson, that one morning he observed one of these hawks dart down on the ground, and seize a
mouse, which he carried to a fence post; where,
after examining it for some time, he left it; and a little while after pounced upon another mouse, which he instantly carried off to his nest in the hollow of a tree hard by. The gentleman, anxious to know why the hawk had rejected the first mouse, went up to it, and found it to be almost covered with lice, and greatly emaciated Here was not only delicacy of taste, but sound and prudent reasoning. “If I carry this to my
nest,” thought he, ” it will fill it with vermin; and hardly be worth eating.Many writers have spoken of this bird as inhabiting the West India islands, and especially Hispaniola, whence the species has been commonly known by the name of Saint Domingo hawks. Cayenne is given as its habitat by Brisson and Buffon; Paraguay, by D’Azara; and the Straits of Magellan, by Captain King. In the United States it usually builds in a hollow tree, and generally at a considerable distance from the ground, but in the south it is said to be more sociable, and DAzara asserts that it will even take up its rbode in churches and other old buildings. It lays from two to four or five eggs; and the young when hatched are fed with small birds, grasshoppers, and mice, the usual food of the parent birds.about the barnyard for mice or young chickens.
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