Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 55.djvu/645

 so it was cut off close to his beak, whereupon he swallowed what remained in his mouth and looked relieved. His meal proved too much for him, however, and he only lived a few days after it.

The different species of hawks vary greatly as regards the readiness with which they may be called—most of them, in fact, absolutely refusing to be lured in any way. As might be expected from its habits, the marsh hawk is the most susceptible, and in still weather may be brought from a distance of one hundred yards or more. At the first squeak he wheels about in the air and comes directly toward you with most unexpected impetuosity and swiftness. His discomposure on discovering the fraud is usually most amusing, as he stops short in mid air, with wings and legs asprawl, and turning his back on you, hurries off in feverish haste.

The red-tailed and red-shouldered hawks are also easily attracted in this manner, but the rough-legged hawks, although they live almost entirely on mice, are not so readily deceived, though this is undoubtedly owing more to their extreme wariness than to any dullness of hearing on their part.

None of the falcons or short-winged hawks pay the slightest attention to the most lifelike squeaking, so that evidently when they do deign to attack such ignoble quarry as a field mouse they depend more on their eyesight than on the sense of hearing. One still October day the red-tailed hawks were soaring and screaming above the pines beneath which I was hidden; by mimicking their cries I enticed one of them nearer and nearer, till at last he closed his wings and alighted bolt upright on a dead stump not fifty feet away. Changing my tactics, I endeavored to convince the hawk that a family quarrel was in progress among the mice in the thick clump of pines below him, and was rewarded by seeing him turn first one keen eye and then the other on my place of concealment; then he leaned forward and crouched catlike on his perch, half opening his broad wings and shifting his feet about in his impatience. But he evidently desired more positive evidence than his ears could give him before making the final dash for his breakfast. There was a slender dead branch beside me, and cautiously taking this, I shoved it slowly along under the carpet of pine needles out into the opening, as one sometimes amuses a kitten with a pencil beneath the tablecloth. The instant the hawk's eye caught the movement of the pine needles he descended with a whir almost to the point of seizing the stick in his claws; then, catching sight for the first time of the author of his disappointment, he rose flapping into the air, shrieking out his anger to the skies. If we had been more evenly matched in weight, I fear I should have suffered the most extreme punishment for my deceit.