154 THE BIKDS OF DEVOX. 



keeper shot her. But it is a curious fact that this dangerous bird is 

 seldom seen, even in districts where Sparrow-Hawks are still comparatively 

 plentiful. A dozen male Sparrow-Hawks may be met with to one female. 

 These stronger and larger birds, decidedly the better halves of the Sparrow- 

 Hawk family, foi' they are fully one third as large again as their mates, 

 have a way of keeping out of sight, and very often some other large 

 Hawk (a Peregrine, a Buzzard, or a Harrier) is charged with the damage of 

 which a female Sparrow-Hawk, keeping close in some thick fir-plantation, 

 is the real author. Captain Shelley and Mr. Cavendish Taylor have 

 noticed in Egypt the same fact of the preponderance of males in the case 

 of the Merlin, sometimes counting thirty rasle birds to one female. The 

 Sparrow-Hawk takes its prey by swooping low above the ground, 

 skimming, like a Grouse, over every rise and fall, that it may come upon 

 its victim unawares ; so that one of Sam Weller's immortal mots, " I'll be 

 with you in a minute, as the Sparrow-Hawk said when he heard the 

 Kobin singing round the corner," is very true to life. 



One day, when shooting on the Brauntou Burrows, we stooped down to 

 whistle some Golden Plovers passing over, when a cock Sparrow-Hawk, 

 deceived by our voice, skimmed suddenly over the ridge of sand just above 

 and, on discovering his mistake, made otl' in great haste and alarm. "We 

 have had these bold birds carry off our dead Tringce right under our nose, 

 after we had fired a shot on the sands. The male Spairow-Hawk, in his 

 jnirsuit of the Blackbird, follows it in headlong Hight through the bushes 

 in which the quarry vainly seeks refuge. One season we were annoyed 

 by a Sparrow-Hawk's persistently working a small marsh below our house, 

 and striking down every Teal and Snipe as the birds dropped in, carrying 

 the Snipe always to a small stile in one of the covers to eat them at leisure, 

 where we were disgusted to find the ground beneath littered with Snipe- 

 feathers. Sparrow-Hawks sometimes devote themselves for a time ex- 

 clusively to Wood-Pigeons, striking them oft' their perches on the trees; 

 and will continue to do tliis until they have destroyed every bird coming 

 to a plantation to roost. A young male Sparrow-Hawk, one out of a 

 brood we were vainly attempting to train, one day nearly murdered one of 

 Mr. W. Brodrick's favourite Palcons, of which we had the temporary 

 charge, as she was sitting on our gloved hand to cat her dinner. We 

 chanced to be standing sufficiently near the bow-perch, on which the young 

 Hawks weve seated, to be within distance of the leash of one of them, which, 

 to our astonishment, suddenly flew up, and caught the Falcou round the 

 throat with the tight grip of his long feet and claws, and we had some 

 difficulty in saving the Falcon from being throttled. 



In spite of the constant war carried on against it by gamekeepers, the 

 Sparrow-Hawk is still fairly common in the county, as there are numerous 

 will districts, where keepers are few, in which it is able to recruit its 

 numbers. Its favourite nesting-place is a fir-plantation, where it chooses 

 some old Crow's or Magpie's nest. The plaintive wailing of the young 

 often betrays the position to the destroyer. 



The Sparrow-Hawk sometimes receives covisiderable accessions to its 

 numbers in autumn in Western Devon, as in September lb73, and Sep- 



