

144 ORNITHOLOGICAL RAMBLES. 



considerably in his estimation. Why, I might as 

 well, he assured me, attempt to defend "that 'ere 

 buzzard-hawk that he trapped last night." "Buz- 

 zard-hawk !" I exclaimed, " 1 see nothing like a 

 buzzard, or even a hawk, on yonder tree, except 

 the wings and tails of a few kestrels that flutter in 

 the breeze under their featherless skulls ; and 

 they, too, have no right to a place in this Golgo- 

 tha, for they do not hurt the game." "No," 

 replied he, "he is not there, but at the farther 

 end of the wood, where I trapped him, and where 

 he now hangs from the branch of a tiller :* he 

 was the plague of my life last summer, and took 

 more young pheasants from under the coops than 

 all the other varmint put together." 



"Oh!" said I, "you mean the sparrowhawk." 

 "Oh no !" he "know'd that chap too, well enough, 

 but it wa'nt he." So to satisfy my curiosity, and 

 perhaps obtain a recent specimen of a rare bird 

 which, indeed, any individual of the Falconida 

 larger than the sparrowhawk has now become T 

 bade adieu to my friend, and returned with the 

 keeper to a distant part of the wood which we had 

 just quitted. As we threaded our way through 

 the narrow, tortuous paths, or shooting roads, that 

 wound through the thickest parts of the cover, I 



* A young growing tree. 



