This Hawk is not as active or destructive as others of the Falcon tribe. Its flight is usually short and irregular, darting here and there, often hovering in a suspended manner for several moments at a time. During the summer months, it occasionally kills small birds, but feeds chiefly upon mice, lizards, grasshoppers, crickets, and the like, as they are so much easier to capture than full grown birds, and to which they rarely turn their attention, until the cold weather drives the other forms of life, upon which they so largely feed, into their winter beds. The bird that suffers most outside of the Horned Larks and Longspurs, is the Tree Sparrow, as it prefers the hedges and small thickets upon the prairies, instead of the wooded lands, for its sheltered home; its food in all such cases being upon the open lands, and whenever there is snow upon the ground it drifts against the hedges and forces the little birds to seek the bare spots, quite a distance away, for the seeds on or fallen from the weeds. Here it is that the Hawk, says Goss, successfully performs its work, by darting from a perch and striking the Sparrow, either upon the ground or before it can reach its hiding place.
The woods are full of voices everywhere;
An hundred chipmunks' sharp, quick tones are there;
The cricket's chirp, the partridge drum,
The harsh-voiced crows which go and come,
In Nature's song agree.
The breeze that wanders through the firs,
The rustle of each leaf that stirs,
Are whisperings to me.
So, when swift impulse leads in ways unknown,