38 LOCUSTS AND WILD HONEY 



of rare occurrence. He saw a bird, a sparrow he 

 thinks, fly against the side of a horse and fill his beak 

 with hair from the loosened coat of the animal. He 

 saw a shrike pursue a chickadee, when the latter 

 escaped by taking refuge in a small hole in a tree. 

 One day in early spring he saw two hen-hawks, that 

 were circling and screaming high in air, approach each 

 other, extend a claw, and, clasping them together, 

 fall toward the earth, flapping and struggling as if 

 they were tied together; on nearing the ground they 

 separated and soared aloft again. He supposed that 

 it was not a passage of war but of love, and that the 

 hawks were toying fondly with each other. 



He further relates a curious circumstance of find- 

 ing a hummingbird in the upper part of a barn with 

 its bill stuck fast in a crack of one of the large tim- 

 bers, dead, of course, with wings extended, and as 

 dry as a chip. The bird seems to have died, as it 

 had lived, on the wing, and its last act was indeed 

 a ghastly parody of its living career. Fancy this 

 nimble, flashing sprite, whose life was passed prob- 

 ing the honeyed depths of flowers, at last thrusting 

 its bill into a crack in a dry timber in a hay-loft, 

 and, with spread wings, ending its existence ! 



When the air is damp and heavy, swallows fre- 

 quently hawk for insects about cattle and moving 

 herds in the field. My farmer describes how they 

 attended him one foggy day, as he was mowing in 

 the meadow with a mowing-machine. It had been 

 foggy for two days, and the swallows were very hun- 

 gry, and the insects stupid and inert. When the 



