SCHOOL DEPARTMENT 



Edited by MABEL OSGOOD WRIGHT 

 Address all communications to the Editor of the School Department, National 

 Association of Audubon Societies, 141 Broadway, New York City 



APRIL— WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT HAWKS? 



If you cannot discover new birds in your locality, 

 try to find something new about the old ones 



OXCE more the little marsh frogs are peeping, and the return of the birds 

 is at hand. We shall soon welcome all our familiar friends, but, without 

 neglecting them, let us open eyes and ears and find time either to add 

 to the list or perhaps learn something new about a group of birds of which 

 we may have grown contemptuous through familiarity. 



A dozen years ago, bird students thought they knew all there was to be 

 learned about the Robin, Crow, Jay, and other common birds. Then came the 

 improved photography, with its rapid lens and shutter and the focusing glass, 

 wherein a moving object could be seen and caught exactly at the desired, 

 moment, and straightway we knew that we had almost everything to learn about 

 the home-life of this living bird, even though scientists had already numbered 

 every bone and feather of the dead ones. 



People often have a very good knowledge of the familiar song birds, as well 

 as those of striking plumage; but the so-called Birds of Prey are passed by in 

 bulk, and are merely called Hawks or Owls, as the case may be, with prejudice 

 and a miscellaneous desire to kill lodged against the entire guild. 



But there are good Hawks, neutral Hawks and bad Hawks, in the same ratio 

 as there are good and bad people, and the same obtains with the Owls. 



The Sharp-shinned Hawk is on the black list, so is Cooper's Hawk and the 

 Goshawk; but the sins of these three should not be let fall on the useful Sparrow 

 Hawk, the devourer of grasshoppers, and other large insects and beetles, — the 

 Marsh Hawk of summer days and the open or partly wooded low meadows, — or 

 the majestic Red-shouldered Hawk, who loves the woods near water where he 

 can put his nest high in a tree, and yet have good frog-hunting near home. This 

 is the Hawk that cries Kiou! Kiou! in such a way that its identity by voice is 

 sometimes mixed with that of the Blue Ja}-, who often has a hard time to prove 

 an alihi! 



The Red-tailed Hawk, also called Hen Hawk, and decried by the farmer as a 

 harrier of poultry, while a careful analysis of their food has shown that mice, 

 and other mammals, reptiles and insects are by far a larger article of their diet 

 than birds or poultry. Watch a ])air of Red-tails circling through the air of an 



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