Page:Bird-lore Vol 08.djvu/199

 The Home-life of the Red-tailed Hawk i57 which preceded him up the hillside. He neither saw me on the ground nor stopped to reconnoiter, but flew directly on the edge of the nest and began feeding and picking over the young. Unfortunately, the foliage was very thick, or a photograph might have been made from my position on the ground. As my visits became more frequent, the Hawks seemed to recognize the wearer of a brown duck coat as the disturber of their nest. From this RED-TAILS, TWENTY-NINE DAYS OLD time on I was greeted from afar by a defiant scream of anger, anxiety and parental instinct, while the men who worked in the fields near by were not noticed in the least. On my last visit to the Hawks, the nest contained the half-eaten remains of a gopher, and a few feathers which once belonged to a Blue Jay. A Jay had recently been guilty of destroying the home of a House Wren near by in a fence-post, and I earnestly hope it was this bird that met his Waterloo in the sharp talons of the Hawk.