nce to observe her incubating habits. I was
surprised at the frequent and long recesses that she took during
school-hours. Every hour during the warmest days she was off from
ten to twelve minutes, either to take the air or to take a bite,
or to let up on the temperature of her eggs, or to have a word
with her other family; I am at a loss to know which. Toward the
end of her term, which was twelve days, and as the days grew
cooler, she was not gadding out and in so often, but kept her
place three or four hours at a time.

When the young were hatched they seemed mainly fed with
insects--spiders or flies gathered off the timbers and clapboards
of the inside of the barn. It was a pretty sight to see the
mother-bird making the rounds of the barn, running along the
timbers, jumping up here and there, and seizing some invisible
object, showing the while her white petticoats--as a French girl
called that display of white tail-feathers.

Day after day and week after week as I look through the big,
open barn door I see a marsh hawk beating about low over the
fields. He, or rather she (for I see by the greater size and
browner color that it is the female), moves very slowly and
deliberately on level, flexible wing, now over the meadow, now
over the oat or millet field, then above the pasture and the
swamp, tacking and turning, her eye bent upon the ground, and no
doubt sending fear or panic through the heart of many a nibbling
mouse or sitting bird. She occasionally hesitates or stops in her
flight and drops upon the ground, as if seeking insects or frogs
or snakes. I have never yet seen her swoop or strike after the
manner of other hawks. It is a pleasure to watch her through the
glass and see her make these circuits of the fields on effortless
wing, day after day, and strike no bird or other living thing, as
if in quest of something she never finds. I never see the male.
She has perhaps assigned him other territory to hunt over. He is
smaller, with more blue in his plumage. One day she had a scrap
or a game of some kind with three or four crows on the side of a
rocky hill. I think the crows teased and annoyed her. I heard
their cawing and saw them pursuing the hawk, and then saw her
swoop upon them or turn over in the air beneath them, as if to
show them what feats she could do on the wing that were beyond
their powers. The crows often made a peculiar guttural cawing and
cackling as if they enjoyed the sport, but they were