64 Next to the Ground 



other, especially hungry young hawks, just 

 out of the nest. It is a cry of three notes, 

 melodious, and pleading, unlike yet pitched in 

 key with the call of the mourning dove. If the 

 young hawks cry continuously upon an August 

 morning it is to the countryside almost a certain 

 sign of rain before midnight. The three notes 

 are insistently repeated, after a barely percep- 

 tible pause. The sound is curiously vibrant 

 and carrying, often coming clearer across 

 stretches of open field than in the woods about 

 the nest. The young birds haunt the vicin- 

 age of the nest, long after they are strong on 

 the wing. They grow so rapidly, and take wi ng 

 so easily, it is only this haunting that by mid- 

 August distinguishes them from their parents. 

 Hawks commonly lay two eggs, but the 

 bigger ones, such as the red-winged hen hawk 

 oftener than not raise but a single nestling. 

 That is true also of the horned owls, big 

 brown-mottled fellows, six feet from tip to tip. 

 Blue-tailed hawks which are small, yet savage 

 hunters of quail, often destroying whole coveys 

 of them, bring up their young in pairs. So do 

 the comic screech-owls, the fussiest and most 

 self-important of all birds. Owlets speak to 

 their parents and the world at large, with a sort 

 of chuckle, half querulous, half wheedling. 

 They are full-fledged before they quit the nest, 

 which is in either a hollow tree, a dry cranny 



