10 BIRD LIFE IN ENGLAND. 



of all sorts, beetles, and no doubt other kindred foods, such as 

 worms, slugs, and even frogs perhaps, form this useful red 

 hawk's food. I cordially commend him to an enlightened 

 forbearance ! 



Nor can the sparrowhawk that nemesis of the finches 

 be considered very destructive to partridge or grouse. He is 

 that dark-coloured bird we see beating the marsh lands, or 

 mobbed by crows and sparrows as he flies guiltily from wood 

 to wood. Twice a-year when hedges are thick with migrants 

 he debouches himself and feeds licentiously on whatever he 

 will, and for the rest of the time subsists variously on the 

 changing small birds of the seasons. 



He is not popular in the chicken- yard. " A neighbouring 

 gentleman," writes Gilbert White, "one summer had lost 

 many of his chickens by a sparrowhawk, that came gliding 

 down by a faggot pile and the end of his house to the place 

 where the coops stood. The owner, inwardly vexed to see 

 his brood thus diminishing, hung a setting-net adroitly 

 between the pile and the house, into which the caitiff dashed 

 and was entangled. Resentment suggested the law of 

 retaliation ; he therefore clipped the hawk's wings, cut off 

 his talons, and, fixing a cork on his bill, threw him down 

 amongst the brood hens. Imagination cannot paint the 

 scene that ensued. The expressions that fear, rage, and 

 revenge supplied were new, or, at least, such as had been 

 unnoticed before. The exasperated matrons upbraided, they 

 execrated, they insulted, they triumphed. In a word, they 

 never desisted from buffeting their adversary till they had 

 torn him in a hundred pieces." Maternal feelings, I have 

 observed, are always extravagant. 



As for those admirable birds, the hawks of the night time, 

 their continual persecution is wanton and reckless. One 

 correspondent thinks that since " the regular destruction of 

 owls by gamekeepers and 'others, it is a notorious fact that 

 field mice have increased to an enormous extent, so much so 

 as in many instances to do incalculable injury to the ground 



