A gamekeeper's ornithology. 145 



gave way, and I soon perceived that I had sunk 

 very considerably in his estimation. Why, I might 

 as well, he assured me, attempt to defend "that 

 'ere buzzard-hawk that he trapped last night." 

 '' Buzzard-hawk ! " I exclaimed, " I see nothing 

 like a buzzard, or even a hawk, on yonder tree, 

 except the wings and tails of a few kestrels that 

 flutter in the breeze under their featherless skulls ; 

 and they, too, have no right to a place in this Gol- 

 gotha, for they do not hurt the game." " No," re- 

 plied he, "he is not there, but at the fiirther end of 

 the wood, where I trapped him, and where he now 

 hangs from the branch of a tiller:* he was the 

 plague of my life last summer, and took more 

 young pheasants from under the coops than all 

 the other varmint put together." 



"Oh!" said I, "you mean the sparrowhawk." 

 " Oh, no !" he " know'd that chap too, well enough, 

 but it wa'nt he." So to satisfy my curiosity, and 

 perhaps obtain a recent specimen of a rare bird — 

 which, indeed, any individual of the Falconidce 

 larger than the sparrowhawk has now become — I 

 bade adieu to my friend, and returned with the 

 keeper to a distant part of the wood which we had 

 just quitted. As we threaded our way through 

 the narrow, tortuous paths, or shooting-roads, that 



* A young growing tree. 



H 



