SPARROW-HAWK. 325 



chickens. Careful observers find it does little harm to game. 

 Mice, frogs and insects are also eaten. If disturbed at a meal 

 it rises with a chattering cry of alarm or defiance. In the 

 excitement of the chase the Sparrow-Hawk often gets into 

 difficulties, for it will blindly dash after its terrified victim into 

 a room or crash to death against a window. One male I 

 received had followed a Sparrow into an engine-room, where 

 both were killed by striking a dynamo. 



The Sparrow-Hawk builds a substantial nest in a tree 

 (Plate 136), generally selecting a conifer, but it likes a founda- 

 tion and usually starts on an old nest or squirrel-drey. On 

 this it makes a large flattish nest of fir-twigs, and as a rule the 

 lining consists of bits of fir bark and down. The four to six 

 eggs, generally laid in ?^Iay, are bluish white, strongly blotched 

 and splashed with dark reddish brown (Plate 125). The eggs in 

 a clutch often vary considerably ; the marks may be massed at 

 either end, forming a solid patch, or be in a zone ; often one or 

 two eggs have few marks. Both birds help in building, and 

 though the hen is usually found on the nest, the cock at times 

 takes a share in incubating. One brood is normal, but if eggs 

 are destroyed the bird will lay again. Both male and female 

 have been known to breed in their immature dress. If the 

 nest is visited the birds usually keep at a safe distance, flying 

 round with chittering cries, but I have a photograph of one, 

 taken by Mr. M. V. Wenner from about two feet above the 

 back of the sitting bird. By getting her accustomed to his pre- 

 sence in the tree, he was able to stand with a foot on either side 

 of the nest and snap her w^hen she at last came to brood the 

 two eggs. The nest of a previous year is sometimes used ; a 

 gamekeeper showed me one where the year before he had 

 trapped three adult birds in succession in a gin placed in the 

 nest itself. When I chmbed the tree I found six eggs on a mass 

 of fir-twigs three inches thick, and below this the unsprung 

 trap which had been left in the nest. 



