If the hawk had been one of the swift Accipiters, such as the gray
goshawk or the Cooper's hawk, or any of the falcons, no crow would
have ventured to take any liberties. One of my friends, who collects
bird's eggs instead of bird-notes, was once attempting feloniously to
break and enter the home of a duck-hawk which was highly regarded in
the community--about two hundred feet highly in fact. As my friend was
swinging back and forth on a rope in front of the perpendicular cliff,
said duck-hawk dashed at him at the rate of some ninety miles per
hour. Being scared off by a blank cartridge, the enraged falcon
towered. A passing crow flapping through the air made a peck at the
hawk as it shot past. That was one of the last and most unfortunate
acts in that crow's whole life. The duck-hawk was fairly aching with
the desire to attack someone or something which was not protected by
thunder and lightning. With one flash of its wings it shot under that
misguided crow, and, turning on its back in mid-air, slashed it with
six talons like sharpened steel. The crow dropped, a dead mass of
black and blood, to the brow of the cliff below.
Finally we reached the tall, stone chimney--all that is left of some
long-forgotten house, which marks the entrance to old Darby Road,
which was opened in 1701. At that point Wild-Folk Land begins. The
hurrying feet of more than two centuries have sunk the road some ten
feet below its banks, and the wild-folk use its hidden bed like one
of their own trails. Foxes pad along its rain-washed course, and
rabbits and squirrels hop and scurry across its narrow width, while in
spring and summer wild ginger, ebony spleenwort, the blue-and-white
porcelain petals of the hepatica, and a host of other flowers bloom on
its banks. The birds too nest there, from the belted gray-blue and
white kingfisher, which has bored a deep hole into the clay under an
overhanging wild-cherry tree, down to the field sparrow, with its pink
beak and flute-song, which watches four speckled eggs close-hidden in
a tiny cup of woven grass.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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