140 NOTES ON NEW ENGLAND BIRDS 



June 9, 1853. I have come with a spy-glass to look 

 at the hawks. They have detected me and are already 

 screaming over my head more than half a mile from the 

 nest. I find no difficulty in looking at the young hawk 

 (there appears to be one only, standing on the edge of 

 the nest), resting the glass in the crotch of a young oak. 

 I can see every wink and the color of its iris. It watches 

 me more steadily than I it, now looking straight down 

 at me with both eyes and outstretched neck, now turn- 

 ing its head and looking with one eye. How its eye and 

 its whole head express anger ! Its anger is more in its 

 eye than in its beak. It is quite hoary over the eye and 

 on the chin. The mother meanwhile is incessantly cir- 

 cling about and above its charge and me, farther or 

 nearer, sometimes withdrawing a quarter of a mile, 

 but occasionally coming to alight for a moment almost 

 within gunshot, on the top of a tall white pine ; but I 

 hardly bring my glass fairly to bear on her, and get 

 sight of her angry eye through the pine-needles, before 

 she circles away again. Thus for an hour that I lay 

 there, screaming every minute or oftener with open bill. 

 Now and then pursued by a kingbird or a blackbird, who 

 appear merely to annoy it by dashing down at its back. 

 Meanwhile the male is soaring, apparently quite undis- 

 turbed, at a great height above, evidently not hunting, 

 but amusing or recreating himself in the thinner and 

 cooler air, as if pleased with his own circles, like a ge- 

 ometer, and enjoying the sublime scene. I doubt if he 

 has his eye fixed on any prey, or the earth. He probably 

 descends to hunt. 



Junel2, 1853. I forgot to say that I visited my hawk's 



