HOW A HAWK EATS HIS FOOD. 



x, 



WE must not forget that there are very many kinds of hawks 

 which feed on everything from grasshoppers and snakes to 

 squirrels and partridges, so that their ways of eating must Vary 

 somewhat ; but we will study only one, the one that even city 

 children may sometime chance to see, our little sharp-shinned 

 hawk, the boldest fellow for his inches that wears feathers, 

 excepting only the humming-bird. Since the sparrows became 

 so abundant, he has learned to come into the cities after them, 

 and in winter he may sometimes be seen in our parks or along 

 our avenues, chasing the sparrows, without fear of the multi- 

 tudes of passers-by or of the thundering traffic of the streets. 

 He is equally at home in the silent recesses of the forest and 

 about the wind-swept tops of our bald mountains, where I have 

 often found a little heap of quill-feathers that told me wno had 

 been eating my friends the junco and the chickadee in that 

 lonely place. 



It is odd, too, that my only two opportunities to learn any- 

 thing of the feeding habits of this bold killer of little birds 

 should have been once in the heart of the crowded city and 

 once in the solemn quiet of the great woods. 



My first chance came to me in the city of Charlestown, Massa- 

 chusetts, along its busiest street. I looked out at just the 

 right moment, and there in an elm tree, on a level with the 

 second-story window and not thirty feet away, his long tail 

 blowing in the winter wind, was a sharp-shinned hawk with 

 a sparrow pinned under one foot. What a fierce, alert bird 

 he was, with his keen yellow eye ranging on all sides for 



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