78 IN BERKSHIRE FIELDS 



motion on a still summer day in reality hovers over 

 all the land of the little wild folk, by night as well 

 as by day, and tragedy falls like the traditional bolt 

 from the blue in open field and sedgy marsh and 

 silent forest. On the twenty-ninth day of March, 

 1918,1 found a strange record on my mountain-side. 

 The body of a small skunk dangled over a bent sap- 

 ling, about four feet from the ground. Beneath were 

 snow and mud, without a track in them. The 

 skunk showed no mark of shot, nor had there been 

 any hunters in that vicinity. He could hardly 

 have climbed up and straddled a sapling to die a 

 natural death; besides, there were blood-marks on 

 his head, throat, and back. In all probability he 

 had been killed by a great horned owl, that being one 

 of the few creatures I know which have any fond- 

 ness for skunks, and either dropped because the owl 

 wasn't hungry or else placed on the limb prepara- 

 tory to eating, the owl having been scared away 

 before the meal could begin. At any rate, I could 

 see no other explanation. 



It was on the eighteenth day of March this same 

 year that I first noticed the hawks so prominent in 

 the air. It was also the day that bird song and spring 

 warmth were first apparent. Walking along a high- 

 road above a pine-filled valley, I heard a loud com- 

 motion in the trees, and suddenly a score of crows 

 burst up above the pines like black fragments of an 

 explosion. In their midst was a bird of about the 

 same size, which speedily made off. Pour crows 

 went in pursuit, however. I was too far away to 

 make out with any certainty what variety of hawk 

 this bird was, and the light was in my face, in addi- 



