motes ot tbe 



mark the stately red-tailed buzzards, when they 

 come in force, and all day long sail in the upper 

 air of bright October days ? These are not all 

 our hawks; but are they not quite enough? 

 One great merit of these larger species is that 

 they localize themselves. They select their out- 

 looks, their roosting-trees and their hunting- 

 grounds, and become so far a fixture of the 

 landscape that I sorely miss them if disturbed, 

 as I would miss the old oaks, the hillside, and 

 the meadows that they haunt. With such wild 

 life about us, we do not miss, as we might other- 

 wise, the so-called sad change from summer to 

 autumn. It is a change, not from activity to 

 quiet, from expanding blossoms to matured frui- 

 tion, but rather a change from one form of ac- 

 tivity to another. From the songs of nesting 

 birds, we have passed, not to silence, but to the 

 exultant screams of wilder life that is not harsh 

 and out of tune, but chords with the sterner 

 aspects of a year rapidly maturing, a change 

 from merry childhood to the realities of adult 

 life. For one, I welcome every hawk I see. 

 They represent a thrilling phase of life that none 

 but a sluggard shuns. 



And when the wide landscape is as a sheeted 

 ghost; when the bare trees bend to the north 

 wind's bitter blast, and the river rolls its still, 

 resistless tide beneath an icy fetter that it fails to 

 break; then, with what joy to mark the wary 

 7P 



