HAWKS IN TOWX 297 



The sparrow-hawk is the great hunter of small 

 birds, and in search of them it flies slowly and 

 with pauses along the edge of woods and over the 

 hedges. Its relative, the kestrel, also takes small 

 birds. But it is pre-eminently a hunter of ground- 

 game of the smaller sort that is to say, field mice, 

 young rats, and voles. And it is not too proud 

 to stoop to beetles. Quarry of this kind could 

 rarely be detected by a hawk which hunted in 

 the manner of the sparrow-hawk. The ground 

 has to be painstakingly searched from above, and 

 the searcher must maintain herself so steadily over 

 the spot she is examining that the smallest move- 

 ment in the grass will be seen. Of the two 

 hawks, it will be seen, the sparrow-hawk would 

 prove the better adapted to town life, where small 

 birds abound but small ground -animals are scarce. 

 But I have never seen a sparrow-hawk in town. 



It is not altogether improbable, however, that 

 we may see both of them yet. It has been a 

 terribly difficult business to teach the gamekeepers 

 of Britain that every hawk is not his natural and 

 inevitable enemy. Since modern game -preserva- 

 tion began, it has been the habit of the keeper 

 to shoot and destroy the nests of every bird of 

 prey, hawk or owl. The naturalist bitterly resents 

 the idea that an interesting bird may rightly be 

 exterminated merely because it preys (like the 

 sportsman) on game birds, but his resentment has 

 counted for little. Very slowly, however, he has 

 managed to persuade a proportion of game- 

 preservers and their servants that there are great 

 differences of character among birds of prey, and 



