THE ROBBERS OF THE FALLS 



pastures. He is a harmless and useful little fellow, 

 feeding on mice, moles, and insects. 



Most of the hawks appear only infrequently in winter, 

 but I have seen about all of them, at rare intervals, 

 even the little Sparrow Hawk. On a bitter cold day, 

 the tenth of February, a neighbor caught one in his 

 barn, where the poor little thing hoped to catch a 

 mouse to keep itself from starving. Red-tails are the 

 commonest, and frequently I meet them perched on a 

 large tree by the edge of the woods or by the roadside. 

 One had better look sharply at the supposed Red-tail, 

 for it might prove to be the rarer American Rough- 

 legged Hawk from the North, a large bird of the same 

 size, but with feathered legs like the Golden Eagle. 



At long intervals there is a winter when the fierce 

 Goshawk is common, following unusual migrations of 

 northern birds. The winter of 1906-7 was such a one, 

 and these hawks were frequently seen well down into 

 the Middle States, or further. Sometimes they came 

 almost in flocks — loose, straggling, companies. I saw 

 one Goshawk from the window of a train as it hovered 

 over a river. In the town where I live a boy shot one 

 sitting on his henyard fence. Its crop was stuffed full 

 of the flesh of a fowl which it had just killed and was in 

 the act of eating. In the next town a friend of mine 

 shot one of these hawks as it perched on a fence at the 

 edge of some woods. The snow was deep, and, as he 

 picked up the dead hawk, a Ruffed Grouse darted 

 from the snow close at his feet. Evidently the hawk 



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