At Home with Wild Nature 



flying high like the kestrel and spying out its prey on 

 the ground below, it skims stealthily over hedges and 

 thickets, pouncing upon some unfortunate member of a 

 flock of small birds and carrying it off before its terror- 

 stricken companions have quite had time to realize 

 what has happened. I have watched it seize and slay 

 a shrieking jay, and a friend of mine witnessed one 

 strike down and kill a little owl during the hard winter 

 of 1916-17. 



Whilst bird-watching on a secluded part of the North 

 Downs last spring I heard a song thrush give tongue to 

 her vehement alarm notes in a little spinney a hundred 

 yards away on my right hand, and said to myself : " A 

 prowling cat." I was wrong, however, for in a few 

 moments out flew a female sparrow-hawk with a 

 fledgeling throstle. She passed close over my head with 

 the terrified captive struggling and shrieking in her 

 talons, and sailed off triumphantly into a wood, which 

 has been a favourite breeding haunt of her kind for 

 generations. 



Individual members of this species sometimes dis- 

 play unwonted courage. Some years ago I was severely 

 mobbed by two sparrow-hawks whilst examining their 

 eggs in a nest built in an old holly bush. They both 

 alighted so close to my head that I could have touched 

 them with an ordinary walking-stick, and yelped their 

 deafening protestations so loudly and persistently that 

 I was fain to climb down and escape their noisy 

 clamour. A sparrow-hawk has been known boldly to 

 pursue its quarry through the open window of a dwell- 



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