354 Wild Life in Wales 



double and turn, into play that it ultimately threw out its 

 far more speedy pursuer, and escaped with a life that ten 

 minutes before had been forfeited, and which it would 

 certainly have yielded up with less than half the effort. 

 The snake might often enough be compelled to go without 

 a meal, if its sole ability to catch one depended upon its 

 stealth, or activity of movement, and it is possible to under- 

 stand the reasons for which it might have been endowed 

 with facilities for the capture of food, not enjoyed by other 

 animals ; but assuredly neither the hawk, nor the cat, nor 

 the stoat, is in need of any such extraneous advantages. 

 But it is not with the reasons of their bestowal, but with 

 the nature of the gifts, and the manner of their operation, 

 that we are now concerned, and of these we are as yet almost 

 completely in the dark. 



Of the manner in which birds will differentiate between 

 different kinds of hawks, and suit their actions to the 

 means best calculated to avoid them, almost everyone who 

 has lived much in the country, must at some time or other 

 have had ample ocular evidence. A very pretty demon- 

 stration of it came under my notice one October afternoon 

 at Llanuwchllyn. I was sitting beneath a tree at the corner 

 of Traws-coed, a plantation away out on the Arenig moors, 

 watching two Buzzards soaring above it, when a lot of Red- 

 wings, and Fieldfares, began pitching into the trees from a 

 great height overhead. I have little doubt that they were 

 just arriving from migration ; but, be that as it may, the 

 tree-tops all around me were soon crowded with a twittering 

 assembly, that paid very little heed to my presence, and 

 took no notice whatever of the Buzzards circling above 

 them. Probably they were accustomed to regard man as a 

 harmless animal, in the land from which they had come or 

 they might never even have seen a specimen of him before, 

 and have looked upon this one as some strange and un- 

 interesting creature but quite evidently they understood, 

 perfectly, the ways of the harmless Buzzard. As evidently, 

 too, they knew the difference between it and a Sparrow- 

 Hawk ; for a mere glimpse of one of the latter birds, 

 flashing through the trees, was sufficient to alarm the 



