THE REFERENDUM 



3^7 



ing the cover of some elder brush near hy 

 where I could observe and not be observed, 

 I had little difficulty in soon espying two red- 

 tailed hawks — commonly called chicken hawk 

 • — which were cutting, what seemed to me un- 

 necessary small circles out of the atmosphere. 



At short intervals of perhaps ten seconds 

 I could hear a cry, but it seemed to come 

 from a greater distance than the hawks, 

 which were within my range of vision. While 

 intent upon finding the source of all the com- 

 motion I was rather startled by seeing a 

 small dark object shoot downward toward 

 the circling hawks, and when a short dis- 

 tance under them, one of the hawks, seem- 

 ingly, stood on his head, gave two distinct 

 beats of his wings and closing them close to 

 his body, darted like the speed of a whistle- 

 wing coming down wind on a March day, 

 toward the swiftly falling object. 



The hawk overtook the thing when about 

 thirty-five or forty feet from the ground, and 

 when he opened his wings and started sky- 

 ward, he carried it in his talons. When he 

 ■regained his former poisition I saw four 

 hawks where there were two before. The 

 hawk possessing the stick — which it proved 

 to be — immediately dropped it, whereupon 

 one of the larger hawks seized it and started 

 for a higher altitude. 



The other large hawk joined this one, and 

 with my eyes I followed them until they were 

 about twice the distance from the earth that 

 the two smaller ones were. They circled a 

 few times, calling repeatedly the while, and 

 then the one carrying the stick let it fall, 

 whereupon one of the smaller hawks cap- 

 tured the stick again as the one had done 

 before. 



This was repeated fourteen or fifteen times, 

 and finally in an unsuccessful try at the game, 

 one of them missed it and immediately each 

 one of them set up a great crying — each ap- 

 parently trying to outdo the other, and they 

 all started for the woods at a great rate, with 

 the unsuccessful one in the lead. He suc- 

 ceeded in reaching the timber before the 

 others, so I never learned whether he re- 

 ceived a just chastisement or not. Of course 

 I, being an ordinary mortal, had no means of 

 knowing whether that was the plan on foot — 

 or on wing, rather. 



The only conclusion at which I could arrive 

 was that the two larger hawks were parent 

 birds which were training their offspring to 

 shift for themselves, and to enable them to 

 catch a bird on the v/ing. 



When one of the hawks would come up to 

 the stick — or down, rather — he would appar- 

 ently pounce on top of it, the action at that 

 point being so rapid that I could not follow 

 it with the naked eye. Of course, I could 

 not tell whether the young hawks took turns 

 at doing their "stunt," nor whether the old 

 birds each took a turn at giving a lesson, but 



it certainly was a training, pure and simple. 

 1 secured the stick, which was a piece of a 

 rotten dry oak branch eleven inches long, 

 one and one-half inches in diameter at one 

 end and about seven-eighths inch at the other 

 end. Tt weighed about eight or ten ounces. 



In regard to the manners in which a hawk 

 strikes his victim, I will relate another inci- 

 dent. A friend of mine owned a pair of 

 March hawks, which were quite tame, and 

 after coming in from a hunt, he would throw 

 small dead birds in the air to them and they 

 would always turn over, taking the bird from 

 the under side. Whether this is natural to 

 the species or the result of not being trained 

 by a parent bird, of course, I am unable to 

 say, but the birds that he had were taken 

 from the nest before they were able to fly. 



This article may be condemned as a fake, 

 as some of the others are — and a number of 

 them justly condemned so — but I have stated 

 the incident just as I saw it, and if any one 

 else in any of their observations have seen 

 such a thing, doubtless Recreation would be 

 willing to put it before the reading public, as 

 their aim seems to be to give the people their 

 money's worth and a little more. 



C. L. Dewey. 



THE MARKS OF A GRILSE. 



Editor Recreation : 



Some of Recreation's sporting contempo- 

 raries have published letters of correspond- 

 ents who desire to know the marks by which 

 a grilse may be distinguished from a salmon. 

 To an old fisherman the problem presents no 

 difficulty. The grilse has a deeply cleft tail, 

 while that of the salmon, even when the fish 

 is small, is more nearly square. In the case 

 of an aged fish, the tail is actually convex. 

 Again, the scales of the grilse are detached 

 with great facility ; you cannot handle a grilse 

 without the scales becoming detached in 

 quantities, while with an adult salmon the 

 scales are comparatively firmly attached. 

 Then there is an indescribable something 

 about the shape of the grilse that distin- 

 guishes it at once to an experienced eye. It 

 is slighter, with a smaller, sharper head. The 

 body is less flexible. Size is no guide to the 

 grilse, as on some rivers grilse are fully as 

 heavy, as the small salmon, though this is 

 contrary to the general rule in Canadian 

 streams. 



J. Perley, Annapolis, N. S. 



TOOK TOO MANY. 



Editor Recreation : 



The following is a copy of a notice written 

 on a post in front of Stevens Camp, on the 

 Fence River, Iron County, Michigan : 



SPECIAL NOTICE. 

 Beat this, Doc. McPherson. 



July, 9 226 



10 482 



