434 ON VARIOUS PARTS 



HEN HARRIER, 



A neighbouring gentleman sprung a pheasant in a wheat 

 stubble, and shot at it ; when, notwithstanding the report of 

 the gun, it was immediately pursued by the blue hawk, 

 known by the name of the hen-harrier, but escaped into 

 some covert. He then sprung a second, and a third, in the 

 same field, that got away in the same manner; the hawk 

 hovering round him all the while that he was beating the 

 field, conscious no doubt of the game that lurked in the 

 stubble*. Hence we may conclude that this bird of prey was 

 rendered very daring and bold by hunger, and that hawks 

 cannot always seize their game when they please. We may 

 farther observe, that they cannot pounce their quarry on the 

 ground, where it might be able to make a stout resistance, 

 since so large a fowl as a pheasant could not but be visible to 

 the piercing eye of a hawk, when hovering over the field. 

 Hence that propensity of cowring and squatting till they are 

 almost trod on, which no doubt was intended as a mode of 

 security : though long rendered destructive to the whole race 

 of gallinse by the invention of nets and guns. WHITE. 



Of the great boldness and rapacity of birds of prey, when 

 urged on by hunger, I have seen several instances ; parti- 

 cularly, when shooting in the winter in company with two 

 friends, a woodcock flew across us closely pursued by a small 

 hawk ; we all three fired at the woodcock instead of the hawk, 

 which, notwithstanding the report of three guns close by it, 

 continued its pursuit of the woodcock, struck it down, and 

 carried it off, as we afterwards discovered. 



At another time, when partridge-shooting with a friend, we 



* [Professor Newton has favoured me with the following note on this 

 passage : " I think White must have been misinformed as to the species 

 of Hawk which performed this feat. Its actions as described are exactly 

 those of a Falcon, and do not agree with any thing that has been observed 

 in a Harrier ; so that I have little doubt that the ( blue hawk ' was an 

 adult Peregrine Falcon." T. B.] 



