s her
brown-streaked offspring in her own particular nest, while the valiant
guardian keeps faithful watch over his small colony among the reeds and
cat-tails. But little thought or care does mother cowbird waste upon her
offspring. No home life is hers--merely a stealthy approach to the nest of
some unsuspecting yellow warbler, or other small bird, a hastily deposited
egg, and the unnatural parent goes on her way, having shouldered all her
household cares on another. Her young may be hatched and carefully reared
by the patient little warbler mother, or the egg may spoil in the deserted
nest, or be left in the cold beneath another nest bottom built over it;
little cares the cowbird.

The ospreys or fish hawks seem to circle southward in pairs or trios, but
some clear, cold day the sky will be alive with hawks of other kinds. It
is a strange fact that these birds which have the power to rise so high
that they fairly disappear from our sight choose the trend of terrestrial
valleys whenever possible, in directing their aerial routes. Even the
series of New Jersey hills, flattered by the name of the Orange Mountains,
seem to balk many hawks which elect to change their direction and fly to
the right or left toward certain gaps or passes. Through these a raptorial
stream pours in such numbers during the period of migration that a person
with a foreknowledge of their path in former years may lie in wait and
watch scores upon scores of these birds pass close overhead within a few
hours, while a short distance to the right or left one may watch all day
without seeing a single raptor. The whims of migrating birds are beyond
our ken.

Sometimes, out in the broad fields, one's eyes will be drawn accidentally
upward, and a great flight of hawks will be seen--a compact flock of
intercircling forms, perhaps two or three hundred in all, the whole number
gradually passing from view in a southerly direction, now and then sending
down a shrill cry. It is a beautiful sight, not very often to be seen near
a city--unless watched for.

To a dweller in a city or its suburbs I heartily commend at this season
the forming of this habit,--to look upward as often as possible on your
walks. An instant suffices to sweep the whole heavens with your eye, and
if the distant circling forms, moving in so stately a manner, yet so
swiftly, and in their every movement personifying the essence of wild and
glorious freedom,--if this sight does not send a thr