266 THE WINDHOVER. 



THE WINDHOVER. 



NOTHING can be more unfortunate for a man than to bear a strong 

 resemblance to another who is notorious for his evil deeds. The 

 public eye marks him as he passes on, and tacitly condemns him for 

 misdemeanours of which he is, probably, as innocent as the lamb 

 which gambols on the lawn. This may be applied with great truth 

 to the windhover hawk. He is perpetually confounded with the 

 sparrowhawk, and too often doomed to suffer for the predatory 

 attacks of that bird on the property of man. But when your gun 

 has brought the poor windhover to the ground, look, I pray you, into 

 the contents of his stomach ; you will find nothing there to show 

 that his life ought to be forfeited. On the contrary, the remnants of 

 the beetle and the field-mouse, which will attract your notice, prove 

 indisputably that his visits to your farm have been of real service to it. 

 This hawk has received the name of windhover on account of his 

 custom of hovering in the air. By the way, he is not the only bird 

 which performs this curious evolution. The sparrowhawk, the barn- 

 owl, the gull, and the kingfisher, are often seen in a similar position. 

 A little attention on the part of the beholder would soon enable him 

 to distinguish the windhover from the sparrowhawk. The windhover, 

 when in quest of food, glides softly through the air, at a moderate 

 height, now poised in the breeze on fluttering pinion, now resting in 

 the void apparently without motion; till, at last, down he comes, 

 like a falling stone, upon the unconscious prey below. But, should 

 he be disappointed in his purpose, he rises again in elegant ascent, 

 to seek for food elsewhere. The sparrowhawk, on the contrary, 

 though he will sometimes hover in the air, still he usually secures his 

 prey by means of a very quick pursuit. Both at early dawn and at 

 the fall of night, he will dart past you with inconceivable velocity ; 

 and then woe betide the luckless victim that attracts his eagle eye. 

 This bird often makes his appearance at a tower which I have built 

 for the starlings, and to which above fifty pairs of these birds resort 

 during the spring of the year. His unwelcome visit causes a tremen- 

 dous uproar. A universal shriek of horror announces his detested 



