Page:The Common Birds of Bombay.djvu/38

chances to an assassin of the Sparrow Hawk's methods. It never pursues and rarely soars. Noiselessly it glides into your garden, and plunging into the middle of some thick tree, stands bolt upright, taking in the situation. If its arrival has been undetected, the chances are that a chirpy little company will be feeding in some open space, or better still, engaged in one of those social squabbles which occupy so much of every sparrow's time. Just when they are in the thickest of it, the enemy is in the midst of them, and has plunged its sharp talons into the nearest. A moment more and it is flying swiftly over the trees, quite callous to the piteous screams of its captive, which will not last long. But happily for the little birds, the Sparrow Hawk does not always succeed in arriving undetected. Some lively bulbul, or wide-awake myna, catches sight of the detested shadow and gives a shrill cry of warning, and every little bird dives into the nearest bush, where it can dodge the enemy as a small boy dodges a big one round the dining table. It is remarkable that, though each species of bird has its own language, the warning signal of any one is understood by all. It is phonetic and needs no interpretation. I am often informed of the passage of a bird of prey overhead simply by hearing the cry of "Ware hawk" passed from bird to bird about me. The Sparrow Hawk is just about the length of a pigeon, but it is decidedly a smaller bird. There is more tail and less body. The colour of the upper parts ranges from dusky-brown to slateygray according to age; the under parts are whitish, spotted with brown, or, at a later age, closely barred with reddish fawn. The wings and tail are dusky-