DOMESTIC HABITS OF THE SPAEBOW-HAWK. 63 



room, or even by the cottage fireside. In another minute she 

 returns to the nest — stopping and crying on the way, however — 

 evidently with a bird in her claws (though this I can never see), 

 for standing upon it, on the rim where she alights, she straight- 

 way commences to tear at it, and after a few mouthfuls, as I 

 think, for herself, I plainly see her feeding the chicks, first 

 tearing a piece off, and then bending her head down into the 

 nest with it, and at the same time stretching forward in varying 

 degrees according to the distance of each one from her, in a 

 tender and motherly manner. There is a pause of a few 

 minutes, the hawk still standing on the bird, then she recom- 

 mences, and when she again stops, the feeding is over, the whole 

 process, with pause, having taken a quarter of an hour (from 

 5 to 0.15). She stands where she is for some time, then steps 

 over the chicks on to the opposite rim of the nest, and in 

 eight minutes from having fed them settles herself down, and 

 covers them. I heard the cry of the male once only after the 

 female had returned to the nest. 



The process of feeding the chicks here was so plain and un- 

 mistakable that I do not think I can have been mistaken in my 

 observations of yesterday. It certainly seems strange that in 

 three successive visits to the nest, each time with prey, the 

 young should have been fed so little ; yet certainly they got 

 nothing on the second of these, and I doubt very much if they 

 got anything, without my noticing it, on the first. 



The stages of the female hawk's progress back to the nest, 

 with her cries from the trees where she alighted, I attribute to 

 her having partially satisfied her own hunger at each one of 

 them — as I saw on the morning when I first found the young 

 were in the nest. She may stop twice, or even thrice, in this 

 way, but once is, I think, more usual. 



6.30.— Cry of the male, as usual, and almost directly the 

 female flies from the nest to him. She is back, with booty, at 

 6.35, and feeds chicks just as before, five minutes being thus 

 occupied. Then, as before, she steps across the nest on to the 

 opposite rim, and, at 6.43, is covering the chicks again. 



I could, this time, see the pieces of flesh hanging from the 

 hawk's hooked bill as she bent down her head over the young. 



