10 STORIES OF BIRD LIFE 



to the love of liis youth, his blood leaping high with the 

 ecstasy of spring time. How he strove to please her by 

 flashing his pretty feathers in the sunlight ! How delighted 

 he was if she deigned to accept any article of food which 

 he had to offer! 



Two hundred yards in the woods stood an old blackened 

 and broken pine with its head reaching forty feet from 

 the ground. At some distant date, now far out of mind, 



a flicker had chiseled a hole near its top for her nest. The 

 owner used it probably only for a single year. Since then 

 it had become the habitation of the Arredondo sparrow 

 hawk and his mate. 



One day I saw Dick fly up to the nest with a lizard in 

 his talons. He entered, and from its dimly lighted depths 

 issued a strange, low sound, at that time a new call to me, 

 and one which I have seldom heard since, save in the 

 neighborhood of tjie nest. A moment later his head ap- 

 peared at the opening, and the strange love call was re- 



