FRIENDS IN FEATHERS 



receive a morsel, it caught one of its nest-mates by the bill or 

 wing and tried to swallow it. To watch the performance made one 

 doubt if a baby with two sound eyes could leave the nest. Father 

 Shrike might have warbled all day, but he could not have effaced 

 the Hawk-like tendencies of his brood. 



Yet it is a fact that the wildest and worst-tempered Hawk 

 can be tamed into the most docile and obedient of pets. Young 

 Hawks taken from a nest and raised by hand are so easily domes- 

 ticated that after a few weeks of feeding they may be released and 

 will live on the roof of a house or among the trees, coming at call. 



While in the nest the baby Shrikes squalled and fought; a few 

 days after leaving it, when foraging for themselves, they perched 

 in the trees and on fences of those fields, in attitudes of such re- 

 markable poise and dignity as would be difficult to equal in young 

 birds. 



Then what beauties they were! They had plump, cunningly 

 shaped bodies, while in the nest they were the only birds I ever 

 have seen that could lay claim to the term "dimpled." Their 

 feathering was extremely fine ancj close. Next their bodies these 

 tiny silken feathers were white, the tips shaded to palest gray 

 very faintly marked with black. The whole effect was of a 

 delicate whitish gray, almost invisibly touched with black. 

 They had jet-black dashes running from the corners of the mouth 

 across the eye to the back of the ear, while the tail- and wing- 

 feathers were white, touched with black exactly like their elders. 

 They were amazingly friendly little creatures, doing such attractive 

 things. They delighted to be fed and petted, responding to 

 friendly advances in surprising manner. 



Anyone would have liked them. I was afield for character 

 studies. Here were birds of complex character having most 

 peculiar tendencies. My task was to reproduce their varying 

 moods. Their pictures shall prove if I succeeded in portraying 



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