6 Bird -Lore Boy No. i knew boy No. 2 who had found the nest and taken the young Hawks home. Two he had given away, one he had kept. Calling at the home of boy No. 2, I found that one Hawk (given to boy No. 3) had died. Another (given to an Italian) had been tied out by a string and had escaped. The third he had kept — until his mother became very nervous over it. "It was liable to get out," she told her son, "and kill some of the chickens some day when they were away. And if they should let it go, it would most likely kill somebody else's chickens, so he had better take the axe and cut its head off." And this he had proceeded at once obediently to do! (Oh, wise parent! Oh, sacred chickens!) "The way it tore a Sparrow in pieces that had been put into its cage made her fear," she said, "for the fate of her chickens if they were not carefully protected." A hungry Hawk must have food of some kind, I suggested. And the Broad -wings were certainly not chicken -thieves. They were the farmer's friends and their lives should not be wantonly sacrificed. Pityingly she looked at me. A Hawk was a Hawk to her, and never could be anything else, — an outlaw, an enemy, always proper food for shot or the axe and the dung-hill. The nest, she told me, had been robbed June 24, and when the boy climbed the tree the young Hawks flew to the ground. As I turned homeward I felt depressed. A deed had been done in nature for which there was no good excuse. Were country people alway to dwell under the power of a foolish prejudice? My Chickadee Family By MARION BOLE BECAUSE of its cheerful and confiding disposition, the Chickadee is easily the favorite among the winter birds. A bird that can sing on a morning when the thermometer has registered thirty or forty below zero is certainly a most cheering neighbor during the winter, and one which has remained with me through the summer has proved itself equally desirable as a summer boarder. With the possible exception of the Red-breasted Nuthatch, I have found the Chickadee the most easily tamed of the winter birds. It is not usually a difficult matter to induce them to come to the hand for food. There is, however, quite a difference in individual birds of the same species; some are much more easily tamed than others. One bird, which is the tamest of all, I called the Chickadee of the Chair, because of his habit of coming to the
