Where the Black Tern Builds 93 



harrier, though it looked much like a duck hawk. I have 

 elsewhere spoken of my admiration for the hawk family. 

 The duck hawk is a true falcon. He is the epicure of the 

 feathered race. He disdains mice and barnyard fowl, and 

 lives largely upon game. His delight is in the chase, and the 

 rapidity of his flight is as the passage of light. He overtakes 

 the teal or the mallard, and seizing his quarry in midair, 

 bears it away for a feast. The utter fearlessness of this 

 wandering falcon was shown not long ago at Calumet Lake. 

 Some duck hunters had built a blind, behind which they 

 crouched in their boats. Two ducks came into the decoys. 

 Both men fired a barrel each, and both missed. At that 

 instant, like a bolt from the sky, a falcon descended and 

 struck down one of the ducks within twenty yards of the 

 blind. Instantly the hidden hunters fired the second barrels 

 of their guns at hawk and duck and both birds fell to 

 the water. The men put out from behind their blinds to pick 

 up the birds. The duck was dead; the hawk, still living, 

 though wounded unto death, remained with its talons sunk 

 deep into the feathers of its quarry, and facing the oncomers 

 with blazing eyes stood ready to give them battle. They 

 killed the falcon with the stroke of an oar. The hand of man 

 is ever against the hawk. When the last duck hawk is dead 

 there will have passed a creature with more of the essence of 

 true courage in its being than exists in the carcasses of a 

 dozen of the cowards who have brought extinction to its race. 

 I have spoken of the difficulties that beset the photog- 

 rapher who attempted to make the young loggerhead shrikes 

 "look pleasant" while he was taking their pictures. Bird 

 photography is for the bird-lover who has more patience than 

 I can ever hope to claim. In connection with this shrike 



