92 WILD SPORTS OF THE HIGHLANDS. (cHaP. xx 
and carries it off, though the pigeon is twice or three times his 
own weight. The woman who takes care of the poultry runs 
out, but is too late to see anything more than a cloud of white 
feathers, marking the place where the unfortunate pigeon was 
struck. Its remains are, however, generally found at some little 
distance ; and when this is the case, the hawk is sure to be caught, 
as he invariably returns to what he has left, and my boys bring 
the robber to me in triumph before many days elapse. Sometimes 
he returns the same day to finish picking the bones of the bird, 
but often does not come back for two or three. In the mean time, 
whatever part of the pigeon he has left is pegged to the ground, 
and two or three rat-traps are set round it, into one of which he 
always contrives to step. When caught, instead of seeming 
frightened, he flies courageously at the hand put down to pick 
him up, and fights with beak and talons to the last. Occasionally, 
when standing still amongst the trees, or even when passing 
the corner of the house, I have been startled by a sparrowhawk 
gliding rapidly past me. Once one came so close to me, that his 
wing actually brushed my arm; the hawk being in full pursuit 
of an unfortunate blackbird. On another occasion, a sparrow- 
hawk pursued a pigeon through the drawing-room window, and 
out at the other end of the house through another window, and 
never slackened his pursuit, notwithstanding the clattering of the 
broken glass of the two windows they passed through. But the 
most extraordinary instance of impudence in this bird that I ever 
met with, was one day finding a sparrowhawk deliberately stand- 
ing on a very large pouter-pigeon on the drawing-room floor, 
and plucking it, having entered in pursuit of the unfortunate bird 
through an open window, and killed him in the room. 
The sparrowhawk sometimes builds on rocks, and sometimes 
in trees. Like all rapacious birds, he is most destructive during 
the breeding-season. I have found a great quantity of remains 
of partridges, wood-pigeons, and small birds about their nests ; 
though it has puzzled me to understand how so small a bird can 
convey a wood-pigeon to its young ones. There is more dif- 
ference in size between the male and female sparrowhawk than 
between the different sexes of any other birds of the hawk kind, 
the cock bird being not nearly so large or powerful a bird as the 
hey. Supposing either male or female sparrowhawk to be killed 
