HAWK LIFE 



of the loving father before the disruption of the Thracian 

 home. 



Seldom attacking any creature capable of resistance, 

 the hawk, though of brave appearance, is really a coward. 

 The warrior crow, though much smaller than he, through 

 sheer bravery is able to put him to rout, and occasionally a 

 group of smaller birds, emboldened by niunbers, mob him; 

 yet the peaceable hen, many times the size of either, is boldly 

 approached and carried off by this wary bird. 



On his list of those who may be attacked safely are the 

 various kinds of squirrels, rabbits, crawfish, reptiles, lizards, 

 frogs, toads, musk-rats, common rats, mice, skunks, opos- 

 sums, grasshoppers and crickets. The indigestible portions 

 of these are ejected from the throat in the form of compact 

 pellets similar to "owl balls." 



Driven to the harsh necessity of securing the meat diet 

 on which alone he can subsist, he is doomed to a life of per- 

 petual quest and conquest of those creatures whose chief 

 business in life is to elude him. Notice how his calling has 

 sharpened his vision and shaped his beak and claws, the tools 

 of his guild. Even the baby hawks still in the nest have these 

 characteristic features most strongly marked. 



With a wing expanse of four or five feet and the power 

 of inflating his body with air at pleasure, the hawk is sublime- 

 ly picturesque in his cloud-piercing evolutions of flight, as 

 in ever-narrowing spirals he mounts to the cooler regions 

 of the air when the heat below proves disagreeable. With 

 scarcely a motion of his great wings he circles and careens 

 about at a height of hundreds of feet, at times even seeming 

 to remain for a season suspended in the sky in a perfectly 

 stationary attitude. 



While these birds are attached to their home locality, 



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