276 The Sparrow Hawk. 



chicks, they are specially wary and never seem to come the same 

 road twice. I have seen the keepers watch for days before they 

 got a chance of hitting a hawk that had been visiting the coops. 



In the autumn and early winter months when it is the 

 custom of birds to gather round the stackyards in large numbers, 

 the sparrow hawk will almost certainly pay the assemblage a 

 visit once a day. The evening, just . about sundown, is a 

 favourite time of choice. Picking a scanty sustenance round the 

 stacks of grain, the birds are all unsuspecting. Some chaffinch 

 will catch a glimpse of the enemy gliding onwards like a 

 shadow, and he utters his warning "chink." Thereupon the 

 birds will disperse instantaneously into the nearest shelter, but 

 one of their number is missing. The hawk is away with his 

 supper as silently and swiftly as he came. A minute or two 

 of silence amongst the shrinking birds in the thorn bushes, and 

 then one after another they forget their alarms and resume 

 their search for food as if nothing had happened. 



But birds are not at all the only sustenance of the sparrow 

 hawk. They take rats and water voles, mice and field voles at 

 times; now and again they will descend to frogs, and occasionally 

 they will catch young rabbits. Once I put a female sparrow 

 hawk off a partly devoured adder. 



The sparrow hawk's dining table is usually on some little 

 mound or elevation ; sometimes the top of a large stone or the 

 flat surface of a dyke or wall, perhaps the flat stump of a tree or 

 a broad surfaced horizontal branch. Here the feathers plucked 

 from its latest victim are scattered around. It is often of interest 

 to identify the species on which they have been feeding, and 

 this can be easily done. The feathers are not eaten except by 

 chance. Like all other birds of prey, the sparrow hawk ejects 

 the indigestible part of its food, such as bones, feathers, fur, 

 etc., in little pellets. 



The predilections of this species for darting through holes 

 in hedges and along narrow spaces, such as lanes and woodland 

 gates, is, I believe, the reason why the sparrow hawk is so 

 often killed by dashing itself against windows. I never knew 

 any but this species immolate itself in this way. In flying along 

 in its usual sneaking fashion the bird sees the window reflecting 

 a close fringe of shrubs with what it imagines is a nice clear 

 space in the centre for darting through. So on it comes into a 



