64 
FALCONID.E. 
of a tree, and making another stoop. The rapidity of their move- 
ments, and the sudden turns which they make to avoid coming 
in contact with the branches, is truly astonishing. Although he 
glides like an arrow through the wood, the sparrow-hawk falls 
more frequently before cock-shooting parties than other birds of 
prey. True, his quick perceptions give him full notice of the 
sportsman's advance with his noisy beaters ; yet all the “ feathered 
songsters of the grove" being just then in confusion, he hovers 
about to take advantage of their unguarded movements, until some 
sportsman brings him to the ground. 
“ Very often, of a summer evening, the shrill whistle of some 
little bird directs attention to the sparrow-hawk as he returns 
home, flying high in air, with a bird in his talons. I am inclined 
to think they carry their prey considerable distances, having often 
watched them flying off with it, at a good height, and in a straight 
line, until they left my sight in the direction of some woods. 
Nor does the male bird always make his repast in peace, for in 
J uly last, while riding along a road through a wood, two sparrow- 
hawks crossed me about twenty times. One had some small 
bird in his talons ; the other hawk (a female, perhaps his own 
partner), followed him everywhere, while he twisted and turned 
in all directions, throwing her out at the turns. I watched them 
for a quarter of an hour, and then rode on. 
“ A sparrow-hawk robbed me of a little snow-white pea-fowl, a 
few days old, — the only white one in a brood of five, — singling it 
out from the others while they were all being fed by a lady at her 
hall-door steps." 
As a gamekeeper at Ormeau, the seat of the Marquis of 
Donegal, near Belfast, was one day feeding young pheasants, a 
sparrow-hawk swept close past his feet, and bore off one of the 
innocents. On attempting, the next day, to repeat the same feat 
of dexterity, its life fell a sacrifice; the keeper, in expectation of 
another visit, having come armed with his gun to the feeding- 
ground. 
At the end of October, 1840, as two shooters, in a boat in 
Belfast bay, had just fired at and killed a few dunlins ( Tringa va- 
