Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 51.djvu/616

600 This is probably the most destructive hawk we have, a nest with young birds usually containing remnants of partridges, chickens, and perhaps a dozen kinds of small birds, but very seldom any signs of mice or insects. When together, these chicken hawks are always quarreling with each other, and pairs separate about as soon as the young birds are able to take care of themselves. Their scream is, I think, the most petulant, angry, ear-piercing note to be heard in the woods.

The three small hawks are the merlin, the sharp-shinned, and the sparrow hawk. The first two are commonly called pigeon



hawks. Sharp-shinned is almost exactly like a small Cooper's hawk, but not so compactly built; in disposition he is quite as bad, and makes up in general recklessness what he lacks in size; he is less businesslike, however, and flies through the woods in a crazy, erratic sort of way, apparently with no particular object in view, striking savagely at every living thing he sees, though seldom following a bird if he misses it the first time. These birds have a curious way when alone of darting back and forth between two branches, striking with their claws at some particular knot or leaf, as if for practice, and then performing a most indescribable kind of war dance. Being especially fond of young chickens, they will come day after day to the same yard, and are only too often successful in their hunting. At such times it is almost impossible to shoot them, as they come with a rush and are gone,