enjoying the view, when a bluejay dropped down from above and went at it 

 beak and claw. I fully expected to see the tanager turn tail and flee before the 

 face of his assailant, but it surprised me and won my admiration by doing nothing 

 of the kind. It gave the bluejay blow for blow. The combatants half flew, half 

 fell to the ground, clawing, pecking, scratching, and screaming. There was a 

 bewildering brilliancy of moving color. There was another witness to this fight 

 besides the human beings who were looking at it with all the interest ever 

 centered on a ring contest. The blue jay's mate was in the treetop, but made no 

 efifort to take a claw in the affair until she thought that her spouse was getting 

 the worst of it. Then she came down hurtling, and joining forces with her 

 mate, soon convinced the tanager that it had enough. The jays did not follow 

 the defeated bird, who made off like a scarlet streak to the shelter of the woods. 



On our way back to the farm-house we saw a hawk quartering the marsh 

 in search of prey It was doubtless a marsh harrier, though it looked much like 

 a duck hawk: I have elsewhere spoken of my admiration for the hawk family. 

 The duck hawk is a true falcon. He is the epicure of the feathered race. He dis- 

 dains mice and barnyard fowl, and lives largely upon game. His delight is in 

 the chase, and the rapidity of his flight is as the passage of light. He overtakes 

 the teal or the mallard, and seizing his quarry in midair, bears it away for a 

 feast. The utter fearlessness of this wandering falcon was shown not long ago 

 at Calumet Lake. Some duck hunters had built a blind, behind which they 

 crouched in their boats. Two ducks came into the decoys. Both men fired a 

 barrel each, and both missed. At that instant, Hke a bolt from the sky, a falcon 

 descended and struck down one of the ducks within twenty yards of the blind. 

 Instantly the hidden hunters fired the second barrels of their guns at hawk and 

 duck and both birds fell to the water. The men put out from behind their blinds 

 to pick up the birds. The duck was dead ; the hawk, still living, though wounded 

 unto death, remained with its talons sunk deep into the feathers of its quarry, 

 and, facing the oncomers with blazing eyes, stood ready to give them battle. They 

 killed the falcon with the stroke of an oar. The hand of man is ever against the 

 hawk. When the last duck hawk is dead there will have passed a creature with 

 more of the essence of true courage in its being than exists in the carcasses of a 

 dozen of the cowards who have brought extinction to its race. 



I have spoken of the difficulties that beset the photographer who attempted 

 to make the young loggerhead shrikes "look pleasant" while he was taking their 

 pictures. Bird photography is for the bird-lover who has more patience than I 

 can ever hope to claim. In connection with this shrike "sitting," however, I 

 cannot forbear to tell of another experience which befell two of us while we 

 were hunting birds with a camera. A pair of bluejays, early in May, 1901, 

 built a nest in an oak tree not more than five feet from the window of a room in 

 a Lake Forest home. The nest was below the level of the window-sill and its 

 interior was in plain view. The birds, when building, paid little attention to 

 observers who sat in the window. Finally, however, when the eggs were laid 



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