“Look at these two pirates eating their dejeuné à la fourchette, as it were, congratulating each other on the savouriness of the food in their grasp.  One might think them real epicures, but they are in fact true gluttons.  The male has obtained possession of a Green-winged Teal, while his mate has procured a Gadwal Duck.  Their appetites are equal to their reckless daring, and they well deserve the names of “Pirates,” which I have above bestowed upon them.

The Great-footed Hawk, or Peregrine Falcon, is now frequently to be met with in the United States, but within my remembrance it was a very scarce species in America.  I can well recollect the time when, if I shot one or two individuals of the species in the course of a whole winter, I thought myself a fortunate mortal; whereas of late years I have shot two in one day, and perhaps a dozen in the course of a winter.  It is quite impossible for me to account for this increase in their number, the more so that our plantations have equally increased, and we have now three gunners for every one that existed twenty years ago, and all of them ready to destroy a hawk of any kind whenever an occasion presents itself.”