[Illustration: _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.