Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 3).djvu/434



O railway officials it is a well-known fact that the engines of high speed expresses kill small and large heavy flying birds, such as partridges and grouse, in great quantities, sometimes carrying their bodies long distances. A few months ago the writer was shown by a locomotive superintendent of one of the principal northern lines, a dead bird which, strange to say, though a very rapid flyer, had met its doom through the agency of the iron horse. This bird was a sparrow-hawk, and it is now stuffed and may be seen un the Carlton-road Board School Museum, Kentish Town. The driver of the train relates that he was travelling between sixty and seventy miles an hour near Melton, when, just on the point of entering a long tunnel, he observed, fluttering in front of the engine, some object which he at first mistook for a rag, but when, on leaving the tunnel, he went forward, he discovered, to his astonishment, that it was a sparrow-hawk which had become entangled between the hand-rail and smoke-box of the engine, and was held there firmly by the pressure of the wind. It was not quite dead when taken out of this curious death trap, though one eye had been destroyed. There is no doubt that it met its death accidentally, as a hawk can fly quicker than the fastest trains travel—so the drivers say, who often observe them flying low down in the hedgerow and keeping up with the train till some unwary small bird, frightened by the noise, flies out of the fence, when the hawk pounces on it and devours it. This instance of a hawk being killed by a train on the above-mentioned line is unique, and will most probably be new and interesting to our readers.