274 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS 



to hurry on to other fields hoping for better luck next 

 time. No, there are thousands here; he will drive them 

 out and have one! Then, heedless of your presence, he 

 ranges up and down the hedge, rising at intervals to a 

 height of thirty or forty feet and, pausing to hover a 

 few moments like a kestrel, dashes down as if to de- 

 scend into the hedge to wrest a sparrow from its perch, 

 and when just touching the surface of the thorny tangle 

 the flight is arrested and he skims on a few yards, to 

 mount again and repeat his feint. And at every down- 

 ward dash a simultaneous cry of terror is uttered by 

 the small birds — a strange sound, that cry of thousands 

 extending the whole length of the hedge, yet hke one 

 cry! If you then walk by the hedge-side and peer into 

 it, you will see the small birds crowded together on 

 branchlets and twigs as near the middle of the hedge 

 as they can get, each particular bird perched erect, stiff 

 and motionless, like a little woooden dummy bird re- 

 fusing to stir even when you stand within arm's reach 

 of him. For though they fear and fly from the human 

 form, the feeling is overmastered and almost vanishes 

 in their extreme terror of the sharp-winged figure of 

 the little feathered tyrant hovering above them. 



Undoubtedly it is a fine spectacle — one that lives In 

 the memory, though less beautiful than that of the 

 peregrine or other high-flying hawk in its chase and 

 conquest of its quarry at a great height in the air; but 

 in this matter of hawks and their fascinating exhibitions 

 we have long come to the day of small things. 



Something remains to be said of the owls — or rather 



