DOMESTIC HABITS OF THE SPABBOW-HAWK. 67 



When the hawk flew, thus bearing his prey, into the planta- 

 tion, it was followed at a little distance by two birds that I 

 at first thought were Thrushes, though there was something 

 different about their appearance. Afterwards I recollected that 

 they looked like Golden Orioles, though I could not, at that 

 distance, get their colour — it was, I think, the much duller 

 female and a young one. That they were Orioles I am now, 

 however, certain, for a few minutes afterwards, and for the first 

 time, I heard their cry in the plantation. 



Ja7ie 23rd. — In plantation before light. The female hawk 

 went off the nest just at 4, and seemed to strike out from 

 the plantation at once. I heard no cry either then or for some 

 time afterwards. I now went to one edge of the plantation and 

 looked out, then to another on another side, and so from one to 

 the other. In a little while I saw both the hawks sailing over a 

 covert of shrub oaks, and then across a narrow space, open 

 except for bracken, to another such covert on the other side of 

 it, and I lost them amongst some young trees and bushes 

 skirting it. The pair were evidently seeking prey, and it is 

 hardly possible they could have struck it here except amidst the 

 covert over which they flew, for a bird flying out, and being 

 pursued, could instantly regain the shelter it had left. If, there- 

 fore, the hawks had known themselves incompetent to strike 

 the quarry under such conditions, they would hardly have flown 

 here, whereas the male reconnoitred the same parts yesterday, 

 and went up from such cover with prey in his claws. From this 

 I infer that the Sparrow-Hawk is accustomed to seize its prey 

 not so much in the open as amidst loose or scattered covert, as 

 one may call it, and that it is only when the canopy is very close 

 and thick that the small bird is really put in safety by it. 

 Amidst, or rather into, gorse or bramble bushes the quarry could 

 not, of course, be followed, but almost anywhere else they could, 

 and the branches and foliage of trees are threaded by the hawk 

 with as much ease as by themselves — or, at any rate, with both 

 ease and swiftness. If the small bird could always pick its 

 shelter, then, no doubt, foliage would be a great protection to it, 

 but when the hawk appears it must get where it can get, and in 

 the great majority of cases this will be where it can be followed 

 and caught. I have myself seen here in Brittany a little flock 



Zool. 4th ser. vol. XV., February, 1911. F 



