"The sparrow-hawk searching the fences for them."
All the lesser hawks feed upon the swifts. I have often seen the sparrow-hawk perched upon a tall stake searching the fences for them. Cats eat them also. But they do not agree with puss. They make a cat thin and morbid and unhappy. We can tell when the lizard-catching disease is upon Tom by his loss of appetite, his lankness, and his melancholy expression.
All fear of the hawk is passed, and the lizards come out into the light again. Presently one leaves the rails, runs over my foot, and dashes by short stages into the field. He is after a nest of ants, or is chasing a long-legged spider. It is worth while to follow them when they take to the fields, for they may let you into a secret, as they once did me.
About a hundred feet into the melon-patch stands an old and very terrible scarecrow. It is quite without terrors for the swifts, however. Around this monster's feet the soil is bare and open to the sun. One day I discovered a lizard making her way thither, and I followed. She did not stop for ants or spiders, but whisked under the vines and hastened on as if bound on some urgent business. And so she was.
When she reached the warm, open sand at the scarecrow's feet, she dug out a little hollow, and, to my utter amazement, deposited therein seven tough, yellowish, pea-like eggs, covered them with sand, and raced back to the rail-pile. That was all. Her maternal duties were done, her cares over. She had been a faithful mother to the last degree,—even to the covering up of her eggs,—and now she left them to the kindly skies. About the middle of July they hatched, and, in finding their way to the rail-pile, they stopped at the first mound on the road, and began life in earnest upon a fiery dinner of red ants.
It looks as if nature were partial in the care she takes of her children. How long she bothers and fusses over us, for instance, and how, without one touch of parental care or interest, she tosses the lizard out, even before he is hatched, to shift for himself. If, however, we could eat red ants the day we are born and thrive on them, I suppose that our mothers, too, without much concern, might let us run.
The day-old babies join their elders upon the rails, and are received with great good humor—with pleasure, indeed; for the old ones seem to enjoy the play of the youngsters, and allow them to climb over their backs and claw and scratch them without remonstrance. The swifts are gentle, peaceable, and sweet-tempered. They rarely fight among themselves. The only time that I ever found one out of humor was when she was anxiously hunting for a place in which to leave her eggs. The trouble of it all made her cross, and as I picked her up she tried to bite me. And I ought to have been bitten.