THE SUMMIT OF THE YEARS 



barn. It was a pretty sight to see the mother-bird 

 making the rounds of the barn, running along the 

 timbers, jumping up here and there, and seizing 

 some invisible object, showing the while her white 

 petticoats — as a French girl called that display of 

 white tail-feathers. 



Day after day and week after week as I look 

 through the big, open barn door I see a marsh 

 hawk beating about low over the fields i He, or 

 rather she (for I see by the greater size and browner 

 color that it is the female), moves very slowly and 

 deliberately on level, flexible wing, now over the 

 meadow, now over the oat or millet field, then 

 above the pasture and the swamp, tacking and turn- 

 ing, her eye bent upon the ground, and no doubt 

 sending fear or panic through the heart of many a 

 nibbling mouse or sitting bird. She occasionally 

 hesitates or stops in her flight and drops upon the 

 ground, as if seeking insects or frogs or snakes. I 

 have never yet seen her swoop or strike after the 

 manner of other hawks. It is a pleasure to watch her 

 through the glass and see her make these circuits of 

 the fields on effortless wing, day after day, and 

 strike no bird or other living thing, as if in quest of 

 something she never finds. I never see the male. 

 She has perhaps assigned him other territory to hunt 

 over. He is smaller, with more blue in his plumage. 

 One day she had a scrap or a game of some kind 

 with three or four crows on the side of a rocky hill. 

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