Identifier: birdcraftfield00wrig (find matches)
Title: Birdcraft : a field book of two hundred song, game, and water birds
Year: 1897 (1890s)
Authors: Wright, Mabel Osgood, 1859-1934 Fuertes, Louis Agassiz, 1874-1927
Subjects: Birds -- United States
Publisher: New York : Macmillan Co.
Contributing Library: American Museum of Natural History Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

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Text Appearing Before Image:
n the creek breaks the thin ice intocakes that lie one over another like transparent shingles onthe banks; the flats are hidden by plates of burnished silver,and the Gulls hover over the long bar. The sunshine seems blown off by the bleak wind. As pale as formal candles lit by day: Gropes to the sea the river dumb and blind ; The brown ricks, snow-thatched by the storm in play, Show pearly breakers combing oer their lee White crests as of some just enchanted sea. Checked in their maddest leap, and hanging poised midway. — Lowell. The oak island is edged with silver birches that stretchmarshward like whitened poles for holding some great nets.Low down in one of them sits a motionless white figure.Is it a Barred Owl, frozen and snow covered? No! itswoops rapidly in a circle, and seizes a hapless Bimting,and you expect to see the snow fall in powder from itswings, but it returns to its perch white-flaked as before,and you know that you are face to face with the Snowy Owl, 214 PLATE 55.
Text Appearing After Image:
MARSH HAWK. Length, 17-19 inches. BIRDS OF PREY. Hawks — the bird whose ghostly shape furnishes material for super-natural tales told by the humble onion-growers whose cabinstouch the marshes. The Snowy Owl is a great mouser and a skilful fisherman,only devouring birds casually. Marsh Hawk: Circus hudsonius. Harrier, Blue Hawk.Plate 65. Length: 17-19 inches ; female averaging two inches longer. Male : Above bluish gray ; below white mottled with brown. Wingsbrownish, long, and pointed; tail long; upper tail coverts white. Female: Dark reddish brown; below rusty with spots. Bill hookedand black, longer than the Owls ; feet black. Note: All Hawks have a screaming cry, but it is of little aid in iden-tifying species. Season: A common summer resident; may winter. Breeds: Through range. Nest: On the ground, one foot in diameter, of grasses, etc.; in swampymeadows or among rushes in marshes. Eggs : 4-5, whitish ; sometimes with irregular blotches of brown andgray shell marks. Mange: North

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