GOSHAWK. 105 
been cast in towns, who have never seen even so common a 
sight as this. I well remember, travelling some years ago on 
a stage coach over the Dorsetshire Downs, a lady who was 
going down into Devonshire with her son from London, seeing 
some gleaners in a field, observed that they were the first she 
had seen that year: ‘they are the first,’ said the youth, ‘that 
I have ever seen in my life.’ 
This bird for the most part flies low in pursuit of its prey, 
which it attacks from below or sideways, not from above like 
other Falcons, but occasionally it soars at a considerable 
elevation, wheeling round and round with extended tail, in 
slow and measured gyrations. Its flight is very quick, though 
its wings are short, and its game is struck in the air, if belong- 
ing to that element. 
The food of the Goshawk, which is carried into its retreat 
in the woods, to be devoured there without interruption, consists 
of hares, rabbits, and sometimes mice; and of pigeons, pheasants, 
partridges, grouse, wild-ducks, crows, rooks, magpies, and other 
birds. ‘According to Meyer, says Selby, it will even prey 
upon the young of its own species.’ Living prey alone is 
sought, and before being devoured it is plucked carefully of 
the fur or feathers—very small animals are swallowed whole, 
but the larger are torn in pieces, and then swallowed: the 
hair or fur is cast up in pellets. Sometimes a pigeon is 
heedlessly followed into a farm-yard, and sometimes the ‘biter 
is bit? in the ignoble trap, in the act of attempting, like the 
Kestrel, to carry off the decoy birds of the fowler. Its appetite, 
‘though it is a shy bird, leads it into these difficulties, and so, 
again, when replete with food, and enjoying, it may be, a quiet 
‘siesta,’ the sportsman steals a march, and down falls the noble 
Goshawk. Yarrell says that in following its prey, ‘if it does 
not catch the object, it soon gives up the pursuit, and perching 
on a bough waits till some new game presents itself.’ 
‘Its mode of hunting,’ says Bishop Stanley, ‘was to beat a 
field, and when a covey was sprung to fly after them, and 
observe where they settled; for as it was not a fast flyer, the 
Partridges could outstrip it in speed: it then sprung the covey 
again, and after a few times the Partridges became so wearied 
that the Hawk generally succeeded in securing as many as it 
pleased. To catch it a trap or two was set in its regular 
beat, baited with a small rabbit, or the stuffed skin of one; 
but a surer mode, particularly in open unenclosed countries, 
was by preparing what were called bird-bushes, about half-a-mile 
