from far over the field a piercing "Killy, killy, killy." The snowbirds and the 

 sparrows were stricken with an awful fear. There was a moment of frightened 

 crouching, and then the flock rose as one bird and dashed into the heavy under- 

 growth beyond the roadside fence. A shadow passed over the ground, and from 

 above again came the repeated and suggestive scream, "Killy, killy, killy." A 

 sparrow hawk was abroad in search of his breakfast. It is the smallest as it is 

 the most beautiful of all the hawks. It may be that our presence at the foot of 

 the big cottonwood-tree, on which the hawk took its perch, saved the life of one 

 of the trembling juncoes. At any rate, the bird made no attempt to strike 

 featliered quarry, but with a farewell scream, flew off to a point above the center 

 of a bare field. There it hovered gracefully for a moment after the manner of 

 the northern shrike. Then it dropped down like the passage of light upon what 

 was doubtless "a morsel of a mouse." 



We met another sparrow hawk within a hundred rods. The bird was 

 abundant, and the people told me that it was a permanent resident in southern 

 Indiana. I was interested in the actions of this second little hawk, because al- 

 though it was only the first week in March, I believe it was hunting a nesting site. 

 It was screaming as shrilly as did its brother first met, and all the small birds 

 of the neighborhood were under cover. The sparrow hawk makes its home in a 

 hole in a tree. This particular bird flew to a cottonwood that was bare of branches 

 for a long distance from the ground. It disappeared so suddenly after reaching 

 the tree that our curiosity was aroused, and we left the stave-splitter and his 

 wagon and started - for the cottonwood. The tree stood alone, and the hawk 

 could not leave it without being seen. We searched with our glasses, but found 

 no trace of the bird. Half-way up the trunk, however, we discovered a hole. My 

 companion picked up a club and pounded on the tree. The sparrow hawk came 

 out of the hole with a rush, and screamed "Killy," as he flew away, and I haven't 

 the least doubt it meant it, for we probably angered him by interfering with its 

 affairs. Several days afterward I saw the hawk go into the same hole, and had 

 the feat been possible, I should have climbed the tree to see if I could not find 

 a nest and eggs, and thus establish the fact that the sparrow-hawk gets him a 

 home at a much earlier date than the scientists put it down in the books. 



The chickadee, the cheerful little character in feathers beloved of Emerson and 

 Thoreau, tells the same lisping tale and performs the same dizzy gymnastic feats 

 in the lindens along Lost River that he does in the elms on Concord's banks. 

 On that March morning, the chickadee showed me a new trait in his character. 

 I never before had known the bird to be in the least pugnacious. Yet here he was 

 having a very decided row with a nuthatch neighbor. The birds were on the 

 same limb, and perhaps their quarrel was over some choice bit of insect food that 

 lay hidden in the bark. Whatever the cause, they went at each other like a pair 

 of game-cocks. A blue jay, which let me say in passing was, strangely enough, 

 the only one I saw in southern Indiana, was looking on at the combat with an ex- 



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