22 HAWKS, FALCONS AND EAGLES. 



chances to an assassin of the Sparrow Hawk's 

 methods. It never pursues and rarely soars. Noise- 

 lessly it glides into your garden, and plunging into 

 the middle of some thick tree, stands bolt upright, 

 taking in the situation. If its arrival has been un- 

 detected, the chances are that a chirpy little company 

 will be feeding in some open space, or better still, 

 engaged in one of those social squabbles which 

 occupy so much of every sparrow's time. Just when 

 they are in the thickest of it, the enemy is in the 

 midst of them, and has plunged its sharp talons into 

 the nearest. A moment more and it is flying swiftly 

 over the trees, quite callous to the piteous screams 

 of its captive, which will not last long. But happily 

 for the little birds, the Sparrow Hawk does not always 

 succeed in arriving undetected. Some lively bulbul, 

 or wide-awake myna, catches sight of the detested 

 shadow and gives a shrill cry of warning, and every 

 little bird dives into the nearest bush, where it can 

 dodge the enemy as a small boy dodges a big one 

 round the dining table. It is remarkable that, though 

 each species of bird has its own language, the warn- 

 ing signal of any one is understood by all. It is 

 phonetic and needs no interpretation. I am often in- 

 formed of the passage of a bird of prey overhead simply 

 by hearing the cry of " Ware hawk " passed from bird 

 to bird about me. The Sparrow Hawk is just about 

 the length of a pigeon, but it is decidedly a smaller 

 bird. There is more tail and less body. The colour 

 of the upper parts ranges from dusky-brown to slatey- 

 gray according to age ; the under parts are whitish, 

 spotted with brown, or, at a later age, closely barred 

 with reddish fawn. The wings and tail are dusky- 



