IN BERKSHIRE FIELDS 



where hens were scratching, keeping the trees be- 

 tween him and his quarry till he was close by. Then 

 he swooped like lightning in under the branches, 

 seized a chicken, and rose with it, all before a man 

 could have reached for a gun and fired. The illus- 

 trator of this book tells me he once saw a sharp- 

 shinned hawk fly so low he seemed to be actually 

 hugging the ground. He reached a thick hedge, 

 simply flowed up over it, and landed in a flock of 

 pigeons on the other side, killing two of them before 

 they knew he was anywhere about. Personally, 

 I disapprove of egg hunting and collecting. There 

 are plenty of available collections for study, and 

 most eggs would do more good as birds than as 

 neglected "specimens" amid the clutter of a boy's 

 den. But if the boy can be taught to distinguish 

 the eggs of the Cooper and sharp-shinned hawks, 

 the more he collects the better! It will not benefit 

 his clothes, but it will help the community and all 

 the beneficent birds. 



The sparrow-hawk (a small falcon) and the marsh- 

 hawk (which may be distinguished unfailingly by 

 the white upper tail coverts) should both be allowed 

 to live, perhaps — the former, at any rate. Their 

 food for the most part consists of mice, insects, and 

 so on, although both take a certain toll of bird life, 

 especially the marsh-hawk. At the worst, they are 

 South Germans, not Prussians. The sparrow-hawk 

 is a pretty little falcon, with considerable rosy color 

 on him, and is seen, perhaps, more often than almost 

 any bird of prey by the average unobservant person, 

 because he often sits on roadside telegraph poles or 

 courses over the fields. I have seen them over the 



