110 A GAMEKEEPER'S NOTE-BOOK 



One evening we were passing through a large, old- 

 fashioned wood, when we came upon a keeper feed- 

 ing his pheasants many hundreds of them : 

 The and the talk went round to the question of 

 Out- Pei sparrow-hawks and game. We suggested 

 witted that it was a wise keeper who spared the 

 sparrow-hawk that this hawk did not 

 kill game for a tithe of its food and that the 

 time only came to kill it after it had been pr.oved 

 to attack game as a habit. But the keeper would 

 not hear of this ; and he thanked his stars, he said, 

 that not a sparrow-hawk remained alive in his woods. 

 Just as he said these words we chanced to see before 

 us on the ride, in the middle of the long rank of 

 pheasant coops, a dead blackbird. The feathers lay 

 scattered about the bird in a circle ; there was 

 every sign of a sparrow-hawk's work. We called 

 the keeper's attention to that blackbird's body. 

 He agreed that a hawk had killed it, and then we 

 drew from him the confession that he had not lost a 

 single pheasant from a sparrow- or any other hawk. 

 The keeper told us a story of how a brood of sparrow- 

 hawks had been reared in a tree at the back of the 

 very hut in which the pheasants' food was mixed. 

 Though the hut was also a sort of watch-tower, yet 

 the man who spent his days thereabouts had failed 

 to notice the hawks until the young birds left the 

 nest. This is not to say that the powerful old hen 

 sparrow-hawk did not raid the pheasants ; but it 

 is certain that she outwitted the under-keeper who 



