CHAPTER YI. 
THE SPAEROWHAWK 
(Nisiis communis ). 
“ Sometimes the Linnet piped his song: . 
Sometimes the Throstle whistled strong: 
Sometimes the Sparrowhawk, wheel’d along, 
Hush’d all the groves from fear of wrong.” 
Tennyson. 
Falcons and Sparrowhawks are as different in tlieir 
natures as an honest man from a scoundrel. After our 
description of the Falcon it is almost obligatory to describe 
the Sparrowhawk, in order to show the contrast which 
exists between them. The Sparrowhawk is also a bold, 
courageous, and active bird, though it possesses none 
of that nobility which is so prominent a characteristic 
in the true Falcons: it is a low, impudent, sneaking, 
cunning rascal,—a regular footpad among birds. The 
Goshawk alone resembles it in form and character; 
otherwise it stands pretty well alone in its iniquity, for 
there is hardly any other bird of prey which equals it in 
deceit, boldness, and thievish propensities.* 
* We can scarcely agree witli this, nor do we think would any ornithologist who 
has watched the habits of Kites. “ We have known one of the latter,” says our 
friend Mr. T. W. Blanford, “ snatch meat from a man’s hand, and food from a dish 
out of which a dog was feeding. In Calcutta, and other Eastern cities, it is by no 
means uncommon for Kites to carry off meat from the basket on a man’s bead.’ 
Nothing that we know of the Sparrowhawk inclines us to believe it capable of 
similar boldness in thievish exploits.—= IF. J. 
