males
sing, and the females chirp and call. Whether there is actual
competition on a trial of musical abilities of the males before the
females or not, I do not know. The best of feeling seems to pervade the
company; there is no sign of quarreling or fighting; "all goes merry as
a marriage bell," and the matches seem actually to be made during these
musical picnics. Before May is passed the birds are seen in couples, and
in June housekeeping usually begins. This I call the ideal of
love-making among birds, and is in striking contrast to the squabbles
and jealousies of most of our songsters.

I have known the goldfinches to keep up this musical and love-making
festival through three consecutive days of a cold northeast rainstorm.
Bedraggled, but ardent and happy, the birds were not to be dispersed by
wind or weather.

THE HEN-HAWK[1]

August is the month of the high-sailing hawks. The hen-hawk is the most
noticeable. He likes the haze and calm of these long, warm days. He is a
bird of leisure, and seems always at his ease. How beautiful and
majestic are his movements! So self-poised and easy, such an entire
absence of haste, such a magnificent amplitude of circles and spirals,
such a haughty, imperial grace, and, occasionally, such daring aerial
evolutions!

With slow, leisurely movement, rarely vibrating his pinions, he mounts
and mounts in an ascending spiral till he appears a mere speck against
the summer sky; then, if the mood seizes him, with wings half closed,
like a bent bow, he will cleave the air almost perpendicularly, as if
intent on dashing himself to pieces against the earth; but on nearing
the ground he suddenly mounts again on broad, expanded wing, as if
rebounding upon the air, and sails leisurely away. It is the sublimest
feat of the season. One holds his breath till he sees him rise again.

If inclined to a more gradual and less precipitous descent, he fixes
his eye on some distant point in the earth beneath him, and thither
bends his course. He is still almost meteoric in his speed and boldness.
You see his path down the heavens, straight as a line; if near, you hear
the rush of his wings; his shadow hurtles across the fields, and in an
instant you see him quietly perched upon some low tree or decayed stub
in a swamp or meadow, with reminiscences of frogs and mice stirring in
his maw.

When the south wind blows, it is a study to see three or four of these
air-kings at the head of the v