How a Marsh Hawk Grows 



BY P. B. PEABODY, Hallock, Minnesota 

 With photographs fioiii nature by the autlior 



YEN so cosmopolitan a bird as the Marsh Hawk must 

 have idiosyncrasies of his own. We talk of uniformity in 

 Nature ; but it is diversity that persists, and that proves 

 itself at once the law of life and the zest of study. 

 Nevertheless, to the uninitiated, all Hawks are Hawks ; 

 and the wanton who unskilfully shoots a Marsh Hawk on the 

 wing because it is a Hawk, and just to see it drop, lacks, 

 probably, the sense to perceive his utter lawlessness. But let 

 ^^ him spend a season on the broad prairie, noting, the while, the 

 many fascinating ways of this most picturesque of prairie birds ; 

 and he will thereafter, when afield, drop quickly the gun-muzzle 

 that springs up so instinctively when the bird rises at his feet : the 

 naturalist dominating the bird-killer when he realizes what it is that 

 wafts itself with such nonchalant grace before him. 



No mere sportsman can know with what enthusiasm we greet 

 the first old male Marsh Hawk, when winter snows are disappearing 

 and some long drive across the willow-clad waste reveals that exquisite 

 gray bird rising and falling, feather-like, upon the horizon line. 

 And when, some ten days later, his somber mate rejoins him, our 

 recollection kindles as we look backward and recall the days when, 

 driving, road-free, through fallow and brushland knoll and willow- 

 stretch, with instinct trained 

 almost into intuition, our 

 startled horse recoiled from 

 the weather-beaten sitter that 

 rose, a yard before the horse's 

 nose, to vent her cackling 

 displeasure in many an im- 

 pudent swoop at the intru- 

 der's head. 



Whoever saw a Marsh 

 Hawk building her nest ? 

 Not many of us. One sin- 

 gle recollection of a female, 

 bearing a large weed-stem 

 in her talons and sweeping, more swiftly than the wind that bore 

 her, across a well grazed meadow, to drop the stick, without a 

 pause, at the nest-site ; this is the one germane fact that the writer 

 has to offer. One is sure that the whole process is carried on and 



(43) 



PRAIRIE WHERE MARSH HAWKS NEST 



The blurred object at the center of the picture is a Marsli Hawk 

 arising from its nest 



