26 OUR BIRD ALLIES. 
On the other hand, poultry, and more especially 
game animals, suffer very considerably at the hands 
—or rather talons—of this hawk. Swooping sud- 
denly and silently from some coign of vantage, a hap- 
less chick or duckling is carried off before it 1s aware 
_ of its danger, and the hawk secures its retreat long 
before the theft is discovered. Or, it makes a raid 
upon the domains of the gamekeeper, and wreaks 
havoc among the young pheasants and partridges 
which have been tended with so much care. Nor 
does a leveret or a young rabbit come amiss to it, 
and, its appetite being practically insatiable, it may 
well be understood that its presence in a preserve is 
by no means a thing to be desired. 
Here let me draw a broad distinction, however, be- 
tween the mischief caused by such birds as this, which 
are chiefly noxious on account of their game-loving pro- 
pensities, and that of others which feed upon grain 
or other agricultural produce, and so directly injure 
the food of the people. Game, as it is at present 
preserved, is a luxury restricted to a certain class, and 
nothing more. It is most irrational, therefore, to 
treat upon a common level creatures which occa- 
sionally make free with a partridge or a pheasant, 
and so injure a comparatively small minority, and 
others that devastate the crops which are to all 
alike a necessary of life. The sparrow-hawk and the 
wood-pigeon are both exceedingly mischievous, the 
one, as already stated, ransacking the coverts, and 
the other devouring immense quantities of corn and 
puls:; but between the amount of true harm wrought 
