The Sparrow-Hawk. 
THE BIRD WORLD. 
(i 17) 
The Sparrow-Hawk. 
(Actipiter Ntsus.) 
By D. STEWARD. 
The Sparrow-Hawk is a fairly common in¬ 
habitant of the British Islands, and is generally 
distributed throughout Europe and North-East 
Africa. 
It has unfortunately earned a bad name for 
itself, for it undoubtedly causes much destruc¬ 
tion—particularly during the breeding season— 
amongst game and poultry, and at all times it 
is an indefatigable pursuer and ruthless destroyer 
of all sorts of small birds. 
Its nest, which is large, straggling and untidy, 
is constructed of sticks and lined with twigs, 
and is usually placed high up in the tallest tree 
it can find; but it sometimes overhauls and reno¬ 
vates an old nest of Wood-Pigeon or Crow, and 
this it uses year after year. 
The number of eggs is from four to six, and 
they are pale bluish-white blotched with reddish- 
brown, principally at the large end. 
An Uncertain Character. 
Under domestication the natural pugnacity of 
the bird will sometimes be wholly absent, and it 
will not even take the trouble to defend itself or 
its food against its enemies, to say nothing of 
attacking them; in other words it becomes 
“soft,” as “doggy” people say, and can be kept 
with birds that in its wild state would be its 
natural prey, without any fear of its doing them 
harm. 
On the other hand, it often retains many of its 
wild and cruel instincts, and, while tame and 
tractable enough with its owner, it is apt to be¬ 
come a perfect little tyrant where other people 
and small pets are concerned. 
One that belonged to a gentleman used to be 
kept in the stable yard, and its chief delight was 
to lie in wait for people passing through, and 
then with a hiss and outspread wings it would 
dart viciously at their feet, which made timid 
persons afraid to venture near the yard when 
it was about. 
Like Master , Like Bird. 
No one was immune from this undesirable 
attention save its owner, who used to carry it 
about perched on his finger, and was very fond 
of it. 
Occasionally a certain visitor would tease it 
by cornering it and holding out his foot towards 
it, when it would sit up on its tail with its back 
against the wall and its feet and claws stretched 
out ready for action, while it hissed in what it 
probably thought was a terrifying manner. 
Now, its owner was not a man of nice and 
genial disposition, and in this there existed a 
sort of affinity between himself and the Hawk; 
for it is a curious fact that pets often partake of 
the characteristics of their owners, while the 
matter of like seeking like seems more marked 
between human beings and the lower brute 
world than even between one man and another. 
I could give many illustrations of'this, only the 
limits of this article will hardly admit of my 
doing so. 
An Unfortunate Family. 
So to return. We set up some Sparrow-Hawks 
of our own some years ago, but were not happy 
in them. We obtained them young, but they 
never had time to quite get over their wildness, 
nor to develop any characteristics beyond that of 
sitting up on their tails when food that they did 
not want was pressed upon them. The rats and 
a weasel—that always eluded observation and 
could never be captured—eventually got to them 
in their outdoor aviary and killed them, other 
birds i{n t the same aviary escaping, curiously 
enough. To remedy this we placed two Hawks 
in an aviary with a tawny Owl for a night, but 
this proved to be out of the frying-pan into the 
fire, for the feathered cat cruelly murdered one 
and made a hearty meal of it; and the next 
morning we found one very scared-looking Hawk 
huddled up in a far corner, and the murderer 
blinking contentedly in gorged satisfaction, sur¬ 
rounded with a few feathers, a beak and a pair 
of yellow legs. 
Sex Differences. 
The female Sparrow-Hawk differs consider¬ 
ably from the male in size, being 15.5 inches in 
length, while the male is only 13 inches. The 
former may also be distinguished from its mate 
by the bars on its breast being of a lighter shade 
—light fawn-colour, instead of reddish-brown, as 
in the male. 
Hardiness and the Reverse. 
In view of the contemplated liberation of 
some of the beautiful Australian Crested 
Doves (Ocyphaps lophotes) in the Zoo grounds, 
it is worth noting that one of these birds 
has wintered in the Eastern Aviary there, 
roosting out under the wire netting in the outside 
flight all the time. This is certainly pretty good 
testimony to the hardiness of some individuals at 
all events. In the same aviary, however, there is a 
living example of how birds of the same species may 
differ in this quality. At the time of writing one 
may now see there the Society’s male specimen of 
the Green or Javanese Peafowl [Pavo muticus) in 
good health and very ready to display his train. 
Yet this bird has had to be put into this aviary 
because he could not stand the cold out in the 
paddocks in the North Bank, where his mate has 
lived quite happily. The male bird showed his dis¬ 
like of the climate by sitting in a tree and moping, 
going off his feed, but regained his appetite and 
spirits on being put into the artificially-warmed 
aviary. 
