CHAPTER LXI 

 THE HAWKS 



THE " GAME-HAWK" 



ONE spring, as I walked inside the sandhills in the roar 

 of the sea, two powerful birds of the hawk tribe flew 

 swiftly overhead. " Game-hawks," said the fenman at my 

 side. They resembled a sparrow-hawk in build, but were 

 altogether a bigger and more powerful bird ; they may 

 have been falcons, but I could not be sure. I hesitate 

 to say anything about them, for they are birds seen 

 rarely, and then only for a moment perhaps. But the 

 fenman seemed to know them well. They were common 

 in his young days, he said ; and he had often seen them 

 " go cruising about, and if they chance on a bunch of 

 peeweeps, they'll pick one flying by himself on the out- 

 side of the bunch, and they'll go arter him, and cut him 

 down clean like a clod. Ay, and they'll go at old mallard 

 and coots tew. I never seed 'em arter small bahds. They're 

 rare rum bahds. When they fly, they don't move their wings 

 much kind of slade along, not like them rough-legged 

 falconers * they go lolling along. And they're wonderful 

 fond of rabbits. They'll go and pick the young 'uns up in 

 their claws, and you can see 'em flying low along the war- 

 rents, everything flying up ahead on 'em, peeweeps and all." 

 The birds I saw flew exactly as he had said, easily and 

 swiftly, sliding along, as he would have said, into the distant 

 blue, over the marram-crested dunes. 



* Most likely the rough-legged buzzard. 



186 



