HAWKS IN MINIATURE 47 



has been known to devour two and a half times its 

 weight in earthworms in a single day. Were the daily 

 tale of its victims placed end to end they would form 

 a wriggling line fourteen feet in length. Yet writers 

 abuse the fierce and vicious eagle, while they belaud the 

 gentle and good robin. Thus Michelet writes with 

 typical romantic fervour : " These birds of prey, with 

 their small brains, offer a striking contrast to the 

 numerous amiable and plainly intelligent species 

 which we find among the smaller birds. The head of 

 the former is only a beak ; that of the latter has 

 a face. What comparison can be made between these 

 giant brutes and the intelligent, all-human bird, the 

 robin redbreast, which at this moment hovers about me, 

 perches on my shoulder or my paper, examines my 

 writing, warms himself at the fire, or curiously peers 

 through the window to see if the spring-time will not 

 soon return ? " 



Writing of this description is possibly very mag- 

 nificent, but it is not natural history. What is sauce 

 for the goose is sauce for the gander. If it is wicked 

 of the falcon to devour a duck, I fail to see that it is 

 virtuous of the robin to gobble up a worm. 



But to return to the shrike. His beak is very falcon- 

 like. The short, arched, upper mandible, with its 

 pointed, downwardly-directed tip and strong projecting 

 tooth, is a weapon admittedly adapted to the tearing-up 

 of raw flesh. The butcher-bird waits for his quarry 

 much as the buzzard does, sitting immobile on the 

 highest branch of a bush or low tree, whence he scans 

 the surface of the earth. Something moving on the 



