8 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
their big round heads and their fluffy white 
down. 
As their feathers grew they became more active; 
they were less and less inclined to sit in a close 
bunch; they would draw as far apart as they 
were able and sit on the extreme edge of the 
nest, and from that high perch they would stare 
curiously down at me when I looked up at them. 
The habits of the parent birds were unlike those 
of sparrow -hawks breeding in woods and wild 
places where people are rarely seen. Instead of 
displaying intense anxiety and screaming at the 
sight of a human form, causing the young birds to 
squat low down in the nest, they would slink off 
in silence and vanish from the scene. This ex- 
treme secretiveness was, in the _ circumstances, 
their safest policy, to express it in that way, but, 
of course, it had one drawback—it left the young 
uninstructed as to the dangerous character of man. 
That lesson would have to come later, when they 
were off the nest. 
As the hawks grew, the supply of food in- 
creased, and the birds supplied were so carefully 
plucked, not a feather being left, also the head 
removed, that in some instances it was actually 
difficult to identify the species; but I think that 
most of the birds brought to the nest were star- 
lings. The young hawks had now to feed them- 
selves on what was on the table, and when one 
felt peckish he would take up a bird and carry 
it to the edge of the big nest so as to be out of 
