74 A YEAR OF SPORT AND NATURAL HISTORY. 



male. The habits of the hen Sparrow-hawk afford the one and 

 only excuse — if excuse it can be called — for the persecution which 

 the birds of prey undergo in this country. The cock bird is 

 almost innocent, occasionally taking a cheeper, and that is all. 

 The Sparrow-hawk has for the present writer an unfailing interest. 

 Now circling the sky like an eagle in brave gyrations, now slipping 

 adroitly through the underwood and securing a starling with 

 unerring aim. It does everything with a certain dash and direct- 

 ness that separates it at once from its ally the beautiful Kestrel, 

 though the Kestrel is a Falcon and the other is not. The older 

 falconers reckoned this bird among the hawks " of note and worth," 

 and an excellent little hawk it is, when trained, coming to hand 

 quite suddenly if it comes at all. But when first taken it is so 

 greatly given to sulks and to tumbling off the fist, that it is a terrible 

 trial of patience, and it is safe to say that the man who can train 

 a Sparrow-hawk can train anything. 



The Buzzards are all worthless to the Falconer : they are 

 " Varlet-hawks." No doubt many who read these lines have had, 

 like the writer, occasional opportunities of observing our three kinds 

 of Buzzards in this country. But those who would see them in any 

 numbers must now, alas, go away from here to the European con- 

 tinent, to Siberia, or to Morocco, because, as large and noticeable 

 birds, the hand of destruction is against them. Yet the Buzzards do 

 not feed on game, unless on the doomed and dying young of game 

 birds. They feed, according to their species, on frogs, snakes, 

 beetles, grasshoppers, " wasp-grubs," and all of them on mice and 

 moles. The "Common" Buzzard is at the present time only a 

 little less rare in this country than its allies, the Rough Legged and 



