A Feathered Privateer.

Pelorus Guardian and Miners' Advocate., Volume 25, Issue 39, 22 May 1914, Page 2

A Feathered Privateer.

A NATURALIST TELES OH THE WAYS OF THE SPARROWHAWK.

She was a beauty, a red beauty, and what seemed to make her even more of a beauty than ever was the fact that she didn’t appear to know it.

She became at first apparent, tothe idle, wandering eye as a streak, shooting at enormous speed over the tree-tops ; and a blackbird, glistening like a lump of coal and all as black, dived, with a yell, for the nearest nut-bush. Part of his earliest education had been to know a sparrow-hawk when he saw one, and he didn’t need to look at that streak twice.

The blackbird went, and the streak came bock, quite slowly—at not more than thirty- miles an hour now—on rigid wings, rocking slightly in the air as she came.

Then she dipped, right down among .the branches she dipped, and settled on—why, so it was !—her nest.

It was built on the fork of an oak tree, flimsy you would have said, and careless. Then it would have slowly dawned upon you that the light and delicate platform was most beautifully woven together, strong as a girder bridge, elastic as a basket.

And that all might fit it, and taste and comfort be not lacking, the platform was covered with down, her own, beautiful white, soft down. There was one egg in it, of a pale bluish white.

Came then a scream. It was neither kind nor sweet, that scream ; but instinct with the spirit of the wild, and a shadow came shooting down, twisting in and out between the-net-work of leaves and branches, in miraculous fashion. It was her mate.

Something came with him. In his ■claws, limp, bloodstained, and silent, was the wife of that very blackbird whose thrill bugle-note had warned the wood a few moments before.

Next moment he was gqne, like a flash, without explanation, twisting, dodging, hurtling, at full speed, as was his—and her—wont, leaving the body of his peace-offering—decapi-tated, if you please—lying on the nest, and his mate brooding over the egg, as expressionless and impassive as if she had been there all day. Next morning, when the sun came sifting down between the leaves, and the blackbirds, thrushes, blackcaps, nightingales —disregarding popular belief —the willow warblers, chiff-chaffs, and chaf-finches were serenading the march of the new day, and the cock pheasants were challenging each other as they flew down from roost, the hen sparrowhawk glided from her nest, silent as a dusky shadow. This time she left two eggs behind her, the new one a beautiful affair of lilac and chocolate blotches.

Her method was quick and to the point. No lackadaisical madam about her, look you. At full speed she darted over the yellow-green banks of foliage and dropped to a stream to drink, nearly frightening two sparrows there into a fit. From the stream, with a few flaps to a beach tree, where she cleaned and preened herself carefully. Then up and away again, down along a high hedge at terrific speed, round the corner at its end, canting on one wing, right through a, flight of linnets and chaffinches rising from a pool, grabbing right and left with her long claws, but missing them.

Off again at a tangent, and away at a breakneck pace in the wake of a starling who had slipped away quietly from the far corner of the pond, then’ down like a meteorite on to the back of a surprised meadow pipit, and up and over the next hedge, and away like a streak of living lightning, taking the meadow pipit with her. And thus she lived. I know that she lived, because, by June 10th, there were five eggs in the nest, all except the first and second being deep Devonshire cream colour, blotched heavily with chocolate. Another reason I know is ibeenuse on June 12th the first egg turned into a baby sparrow-hawk ; on the 15th the others followed suit. Then things happened.

Baby sparrow-hawks eat, you must know, and cat enormously. What’s more, they must have flesh, and have it often.

From thence, for exactly one month scarcely an hour passed but with it passed the life of a sky-lark, meadow pipit, thrush, blackbird, chaffinch, or sparrow at the claws of the parent sparrow-hawks. And at tnc end of the month the young ones flew.