When I shook the tree the Owl merely fluttered a few yards, and lit on a maple sapling just out of my reach. The next time he tried to hide by alighting on the further side of the stem of a pine several inches in diameter, but finding this of no avail, at last took a longer flight off through the woods, where I was unable to follow him.
RED-TAILED HAWK
January 28. Heard what I at first took to be the song of a Ruby-crowned Kinglet to-day, but it proved to be a Black-capped Chickadee, uttering what was to me an entirely new note; like the Kinglet's, only fainter and shorter, with just a little of the ring of the Canary's song in it. He was sitting all alone under the dark evergreens, singing to himself in a manner wholly out of keeping with the general disposition and taste of the Chickadee. When I at last disturbed him, he flew to another tree and began searching for insects, uttering the familiar note of his species.
February 3. There is a little Junco hopping about the path to-day, in spite of the fact that the mercury has been very near zero most of the time for the last fortnight, and that the snow is drifted eight or ten feet deep in places. He appears to spend a considerable portion of his time in the woodshed, poking about among the chips, etc., and I fancy sleeps somewhere about the building.
There are also a few Flickers and at least one Meadowlark in this vicinity, and since the last heavy snowfall they have become unusually tame and familiar, coming close about the house for food. Goldfinches and Tree Sparrows are still quite abundant, and there is a flock of fifty or sixty Pine Grosbeaks, mostly in young plumage, in the woods about a mile to the west of us, the first I have seen this winter.
February 6. About five o'clock this evening a large Goshawk in rather dark plumage came flying across the field only a few yards above the snow. As he neared a tall elm he rose in the air and alighted near the top of the tree, and after sitting there for a few moments, turning his head in all directions, he opened his wings and tumbled from his perch, falling several yards down among the branches before regaining his balance, when he flew rapidly off toward the west and disappeared among the pines. Just a week ago I noticed where a Goshawk, judging from the tracks in the snow, had killed a rabbit, so that it would seem that they have not been entirely absent at any time this winter.
February 7. Have just seen a Goshawk, apparently in young plumage, flying west at a height of perhaps sixty or seventy yards from the ground.
