The pigeon and sparrow hawks

October 6. 

October 6, 2023              October 6, 2022

A. M. — To Boston. 

Examine the pigeon and sparrow hawks in the Natural History collection. 

My wings and tail are apparently the pigeon hawk's. 

The sparrow hawks are decidedly red-brown with bluish heads and blue or slate sides; also are much more thickly barred with dark on wing-coverts, back, and tail than the pigeon hawk.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 6, 1859


The Natural History collection. See October 6, 1855 ("Return to Concord via Natural History Library.")

My wings and tail are apparently the pigeon hawk's. See  September 14, 1859 ("What kind of hawk is this? I can learn nothing from Wilson and Nuttall. The latter thinks that neither the pigeon nor sparrow hawk is found here !!") See also May 24, 1856 ("Pratt gave me the wing of a sparrow (?) hawk which he shot some months ago. . . .It must be a sparrow hawk, according to Wilson and Nuttall, for the inner vanes of the primaries and secondaries are thickly spotted with brownish white.”); July 2, 1856 (“Looked at the birds in the Natural History Rooms in Boston. Observed no white spots on the sparrow hawk’s wing, or on the pigeon or sharp-shinned hawk’s. Indeed they were so closed that I could not have seen them. Am uncertain to which my wing belongs.”) See also  A Book of the Seasons by Henry Thoreau, The Pigeon Hawk (Merlin)