72 Birds of Lakeside and Prairie 



I once found the body of a small hawk which had met 

 death in a peculiar way. I doubt if a stranger fate ever over- 

 took any living creature. I found the bird hanging by the 

 upper tendons of its left wing to a barb on the strand of a 

 wire fence. Unquestionably the hawk was pursuing its 

 quarry when it struck the fence with terrific force. The barb 

 entered the skin and tendons of the wing and held the bird 

 fast. Such was the impetus acquired from the force of the 

 flight that the bird's body swung around the wire strand two 

 or three times, a fact shown by the twisted condition of the 

 tendons. The hawk was dead when discovered, but whether 

 the shock of the impact killed it or whether it died as the 

 result of the fierce struggle to free itself cannot be told. 

 There was no wound save that of the broken wing and torn 

 skin and tendons, a circumstance that shows that the bird was 

 not shot and afterward impaled upon the wine. Doubtless 

 some meadow mouse is still congratulating itself on the nar- 

 rowest escape of its life, and on the death of one of its 

 implacable enemies. 



Recently the undoubtedly wise and humane members of 

 the Illinois legislature granted the right hitherto denied, to 

 shoot during certain months of the year the mourning-dove, 

 the emblem of peace and of all gentleness. I am charitable 

 enough to doubt if any member of the state body would have 

 voted for such a provision of the game law if he could have 

 seen the exhibition of courage and devotion to duty by a 

 dove that once came under my notice. A pair of the birds 

 had built a nest about four feet from the ground in a little 

 evergreen tree on a side hill. The nesting site was in the 

 outskirts of one of Chicago's suburbs. The month of the 

 nest building, April, had been unusually dry; the fallen oak 



