DOMESTIC HABITS OF THE SPABROW-HAWK. 107 



nest, not to hunt for them herself, but to wait about, in this tree 

 or that, for the male. When the latter arrived she was more 

 than usually eager, and seized the booty from him almost fiercely. 

 Some of it she then perhaps ate, and would have flown sooner 

 to the nest with the rest, had I not followed her about, to escape 

 which annoyance she flew away, but shortly returned with it as 

 related. 



I now left and on returning, at about 4.30 p.m., found the 

 hawk feeding her young. I saw her very plainly satisfy two, 

 not in several alternate distributions but by cramming first one 

 and then the other with a number of bits, the meal ending with 

 the second cramming. I then went to watch at the corner of 

 the plantation where the male usually comes in. After half an 

 hour or so there was his cry and, in another moment, he sailed 

 in, and hung suspended, on spread wings just under the roof of 

 the beeches (all quite young trees and, by consequence, not very 

 high), presenting a most graceful and elegant appearance. His 

 legs were stretched downwards, and in both the clawed feet he 

 held something which was clearly a portion and not the whole 

 body of the prey. It was, I think, as before, the breast or 

 breastal portion of a small bird, but there was not time to 

 consider it or to put up the glasses. The male had not hung 

 thus for more than a second or two, when the female hawk, 

 coming straight from the nest, accosted him in the air, yet 

 without appearing to touch him, and as he flew out from her 

 what he had been carrying had disappeared. So, too, the next 

 moment, had both the birds, and so quick and mouvemente was it 

 that I could not tell which was which, as they vanished amidst 

 the foliage, in opposite directions. Not being able to do any 

 better I sat down to watch the nest, and at 5.25, the female 

 hawk flew on to it with her acquisition with which she, at once, 

 fed the chicks. This lasted six minutes, and she then stood 

 statuesquely, for some time, after her wonted manner. She had 

 been absent from the nest, since leaving it to join the male, 

 about five minutes, during which time she had probably been 

 occupied in eating a part of what she had received or in plucking 

 or completing the plucking of it, as I have previously seen her do. 

 About 6 the male hawk again entered the plantation, but the 

 female did not leave the nest nearly so soon, and when she did I 



