Habits of the Windhover Hawk. 461 



stone, upon the unconscious prey below. But, should he be 

 disappointed in his purpose, he rises again in elegant ascent, 

 to seek for food elsewhere. The sparrowhawk, on the con- 

 trary, though he will sometimes hover in the air, still he 

 usually secures his prey by means of a very quick pursuit. 

 Both at early dawn and at the fall of night, he will dart past 

 you with inconceivable velocity ; and then woe betide the 

 luckless victim that attracts his eagle eye. This bird often 

 makes his appearance at a tower which I have built for the 

 starlings, and to which above fifty pairs of these birds resort 

 during the spring of the year. His unwelcome visit causes 

 a tremendous uproar. A universal shriek of horror an- 

 nounces his detested presence ; and scarcely have I time to fix 

 my eyes upon the tower, ere the intruder is off with a starling 

 in his talons. 



Did the nurseryman, the farmer, and the country gentleman 

 know the value of the windhover's services, they would vie with 

 each other in offering him a safe retreat. He may be said to 

 live almost entirely on mice ; and mice, you know, are not the 

 friends of man ; for they bring desolation to the bee-hive, de- 

 struction to the pea-bed, and spoliation to the corn-stack. 

 Add to this, they are extremely injurious to the planter of trees. 

 The year 1815 was memorable, in this part of the county of 

 York, for swarms of field-mice exceeding all belief. Some 

 eight years before this, I had planted two acres of ground 

 with oaks and larches in alternate rows. Scarcely any of the 

 oaks put forth their buds in the spring of 1816; and, on my 

 examining them, in order to learn the cause of their failure, 

 I found the bark entirely gnawed away under the grass, quite 

 close to the earth, whilst the grass itself, in all directions, was 

 literally honeycombed with holes, which the mice had made. 

 In addition to the bark of young oaks, mice are extremely 

 fond of that of the holly tree : I have hollies which yet bear 

 the marks of having been materially injured by the mice in 

 winter. Apple trees, when placed in hedgerows, are often at- 

 tacked by mice, and, in many cases, are much injured by them. 

 I prize the services of the windhover hawk, which are manifest 

 by the quantity of mice which he destroys ; and I do all in 

 my power to put this pretty bird on a good footing with the 

 gamekeepers and sportsmen of our neighbourhood. Were 

 this bird properly protected, it would repay our kindness with 

 interest ; and we should then have the windhover by day, and 

 the owls by night, to thin the swarms of mice which overrun 

 the land. 



As the windhovers make no nest, they are reduced to the 

 necessity of occupying, at second hand, that of another bird. 



