Field and study

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1919 edition. Excerpt: ...dwelling-place, and all its thousands of treasure-houses are made available for his needs. What diversityin unity among the hawks! Contrast these two familiar species which are nearly of a size--the marsh hawk and the hen, or red-tailed, hawk. The marsh hawk has the longer tail, and the back of the male is bluish-gray. We see it in summer beating up and down, low over the fields and meadows, its attention fixed upon the ground beneath it. At the same time we may see the henhawk soaring aloft, sweeping leisurely around in great circles, or climbing higher in easy spirals, apparently abandoning itself to the joy of its aerial freedom. The hen-hawk is a bird of leisure in contrast with its brother of the marshes. We rarely see it hunting; it is either describing its great circles against the sky, apparently in the same mood that the skater is in who cuts his circles and figures upon the ice; or else it sits perched like a statue high up on some dead branch in the edge of the forest, or on some tree by the roadside, and sees the summer hours go by. Solitude, contemplation, a sense of freedom, seem to be its chief delight, while we rarely see the marsh hawk except when it is intent upon its game. It haunts the fields and meadows over a wide area like a spirit, up and down and around and across it goes, only a few feet above the ground, eyeing sharply every yard of surface beneath it, now and then dropping down into the grass, never swooping or striking savagely, but halting and alighting rather deliberately, evidently not in pursuit of a bird, but probably attracted by field mice. The eye follows its course with pleasure; such industry, such ease of movement, such deliberation, such a tireless quest over the summer fields--all contribute to make a...