180 SOME COMMON LAND-BIRDS. 



danger, as he crouched there, plucking his victim and letting 

 the feathers drift away on the wind. What his next work 

 would have been after the bird was plucked I could not tell, 

 I only saw the long wing- and tail-quills drop slowly down- 

 ward, and the lighter feathers float away like thistle-down ; for 

 some noise or sight alarmed him and he sailed away, bearing his 

 victim in his claws. 



A year later, in the Maine woods, where the river leaps 

 tumultuously over the Indian Falls on Webster Stream, I 

 took from the claws of a hawk just killed the yet warm body 

 of a little warbler that he was eating. It could not be identified 

 further, for the head was gone and every feather had been 

 stripped from it so neatly that not one was left to name it by. 

 The intestines also had been taken out by a rip down the back 

 and all the blood had been drunk up. It was the second stage 

 of the sharp-shinned hawk's preparations for dinner or the x 

 first course, we may say; for most carnivorous creatures are 

 fond of the brain of their quarry, and all the hawks that I have 

 seen will eat the head for their first mouthful. The sharp- 

 shin is also bloodthirsty in its most literal sense, and will drink 

 the blood with evident relish while it is warm. More than 

 once I have seen him taken fresh from the killing, and his bill 

 was bloody to the cere. 



Unless his large cousin, the Cooper's hawk, is equally 

 dainty, the sharp-shinned is the nicest of our raptores. The 

 broad-winged hawk will not trouble to skin a squirrel or even 

 the portions of a rabbit that he eats, and the goshawk, after 

 stripping off the quills and a few of the larger feathers, will 

 bolt a large hen, joint by joint, in less time than it would take 

 to describe the process. With his strong claws he tears out 

 the wings at the shoulder and the legs at the hip and swal- 

 lows them at a gulp. None of our hawks is so bold, so power- 



