All the farmers have pretty much the same stories of this kind .

April 4.

All day surveying a wood-lot in Acton for Abel Hosmer. He says that he has seen the small slate colored hawk pursue and catch doves, i.e. the sharp shinned.

Has found some trouble in driving off a large slate-colored hawk from a hen in his yard, at which he pounced again close by him, — undoubtedly a goshawk.

Has also noticed the butcher-bird catching other birds. Calls him the "mock-bird.”

I observe that all the farmers have pretty much the same stories of this kind to tell. They will describe a large, bold slate-colored hawk ( the goshawk ) about here some two years ago, which caught some of their hens, and the like.

The afternoon very pleasant.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 4, 1854

Abel Hosmer says that he has seen the small slate colored hawk pursue and catch doves, i.e. the sharp shinned. See May 14, 1853("What is that small slate-colored hawk with black tips to wings?"); March 28, 1854 (“See a small slate-colored hawk, with wings transversely mottled beneath, — probably the sharp-shinned hawk.”)

A large slate-colored hawk — undoubtedly a goshawk.  See April 29, 1853 ("At Natural History Rooms in Boston . . . . The American goshawk is slate above, gray beneath; the young spotted dark and white beneath, and brown above."); April 24, 1854 ("Saw a very large hawk, slaty above and white beneath, low over river. Was it not a goshawk? ")

The butcher-bird catching other birds. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Northern Shrike

All the farmers have pretty much the same stories of this kind. See June 13, 1853 ("I would rather save one of these hawks than have a hundred hens and chickens.")