The Windover’s 
Year. 
(199) THE BIRD WORLD 
TKe WirvdKover’s Year. 
By G, H« LEW IN, 
Quicksight, the Windhover, is hunt¬ 
ing over a field of early cut clover, 
watching for mice to take to his hungry 
nestlings, so let us watch him for a 
little; there he is in the air, motionless, 
except for his quivering wings which, 
with his outspread tail, support him, 
while he watches keenly for his prey 
below. Soon he sights a mouse on a 
bare spot of ground, and partly closing 
his wings drops suddenly some fifty feet 
only to spread them again as the mouse 
runs under a bunch of grass. He 
steadies himself for a moment, and as 
the mouse runs out of cover closes his 
wings once more, and, dropping like a 
stone until almost touching the earth, 
when he opens his wings just as he 
catches the mouse in his claws, and with 
his prey securely held, rises in the air 
again and sails away to where the 
youngsters are in their nest, which is built 
in an old elm, one of an avenue of giant 
trees where Quicksight himself was 
born. His father would not have allowed 
him to stay there, but that he was shot 
by the keeper with all the family the 
year before, Quicksight being the only 
one to escape. Fortunately he had al¬ 
ready received a few lessons from his 
parents in catching prey, but at first it 
was hard work, for he had to find out 
the tricks for himself, and so had to live 
on a poor fare almost entirely of grass¬ 
hoppers and beetles, until he had found 
by hard experience how to pick up a 
mouse and to catch an occasional bird, 
but he soon learnt, and before the winter 
came he was well able to hold his own in 
the world. 
He Takes His Father's Possessions. 
He took up the old hunting ground 
which his parents had held before him, 
and helped the farmers by keeping down 
mice and beetles, until the cold of 
winter coming, drove them more and 
more underground, and so out of his 
sight, and he had to depend on an occa¬ 
sional bird and any of the more hardy 
insects that came his way; but life, on 
the whole, was very pleasant, and would 
have been almost perfect, for Quick¬ 
sight was of a stout race, but for his 
one great enemy, the man with a gun. 
He had always managed to keep a good 
distance away from anyone whom he 
thought had one of those terrible fire- 
spouts, which had killed his family, but 
one day as he was hovering rather near 
to some bushes, he felt something hot 
touch his side, and some of his tail 
feathers seemed knocked into the air; at 
the same moment a flash of flame and 
a loud noise from the bush told him 
that he had only just escaped his death. 
As he darted away he saw a man get up 
from the bush and walk across to pick 
up some of the feathers which were float¬ 
ing to the ground. It was the same man 
he had once seen looking at the row of 
dead birds tied to a tree branch on the 
outskirts of the wood, and amongst 
whom had been his own parents. 
Winter Shelter . 
During the rough days of the winter, 
Quicksight would often sit on the 
sheltered side of the cornstacks in the 
fields and watch his opportunity of catch¬ 
ing anything that came his way; some¬ 
times he was mobbed by flocks of 
Sparrows and other small birds, and 
once he was so bothered that he turned 
fiercely upon his assailants and catch¬ 
ing one of them in his claws flew swiftly 
away to make a meal of it at his leisure; 
sometimes when on the outer but in- 
