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BIRD-DESTROYING BIRDS. There are several species of birds that may at once be put under sentence of death for their destructiveness of useful birds, without any extenuating circumstances worth mentioning. Four of these are Cooper's Hawk, the Sharp-Shinned Hawk, Pigeon Hawk and Duck Hawk. Fortunately these species are not so numerous that we need lose any sleep over them.
It was the look of the sharp-shinned hawk hovering for an instant, in sheer intellectual abandon and physical exuberance, above the unconscious oriole bent upon its morning bath.
There was Uncle Posen Spratt, from Little Sugar Creek, with his steer's-horn ear trumpet; and there were Nick Proctor and his wife, July, from the hills beyond Destruction, seventeen miles over a road that pitched from end to end when it didn't slant from side to side, and took a shag-barked, sharp-shinned, cross-eyed wind-splitter to travel.
Some of the hawks and owls are very destructive to song-birds, and members of the grouse family. In 159 stomachs of sharp-shinned hawks, 99 contained song-birds and woodpeckers. In 133 stomachs of Cooper's hawks, 34 contained poultry or game birds, and 52 contained other birds. The game birds included 8 quail, 1 ruffed grouse and 5 pigeons.
"How many did you condemn as really bad cannibals?" asked Nat, speaking to the Eagle. "The Sharp-shinned Hawk, and the Great Horned Owl are held over for further trial!" answered Judge Eagle.
It was a simple movement and involuntary like that of the little brown quail when she slips from the sedge-grass into the tangled depths of the blossoming wild blackberry bushes at the far off flash of a sharp-shinned hawk-wing, up in the blue.
Not one moment is he off his guard. A hawk may suddenly swoop from the air above, or a four-footed foe approach from any side. I have seen a sharp-shinned hawk pick up a highhole from the turf in a twinkling under just such conditions. What a contrast between the anxious behavior of these wild creatures and the ease and indifference of the grazing cattle!
I have seen jays tease the sharp-shinned hawk in this way, and escape his retaliating blows by darting into a cedar-tree. All the crow tribe, I think, love to badger and mock some of their neighbors. How much business the crows seem to have apart from hunting their living!
And when you hear the Chewinks scratching in the underbrush, remember they are putting leaves on the grave of the White Dawnsinger. Surely you have guessed the secret; the flower is the Bloodroot, and the Whizz is the Sharp-shinned Hawk. The Prairie-girl with Yellow Hair Tall and fair was the Prairie-girl.
The wounded bird ran under a pile of brush, like a frightened hen. Thrusting a forked stick down through the interstices, I soon stopped his breathing. Wild pigeons were quite numerous also. These latter recall a singular freak of the sharp-shinned hawk. A flock of pigeons alighted on top of a dead hemlock standing in the edge of a swamp.