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A bird with a bite 利嘴的鳥

A three-month-old goshawk screeches in Fairbanks, Alaska. 在美國阿拉斯加州的費爾班克斯,一隻三個月大的蒼鷹尖聲喊叫. PHOTO: AP

How would you like to get close to this bird’s beak? You might think of birds as cute things that eat berries and sing prettily, but this is not that kind of bird.

This is a goshawk, one of many kinds of birds that hunt and eat smaller birds and other animals, like mice. The bird in this picture is young, but it still has the curved beak that all of these kinds of birds have.

Birds like this attack suddenly, flying down on top of the animals they want to eat quickly before they have time to run away. They use their sharp claws to grab the animal and they uses their sharp, curved beaks to tear the smaller animal apart.

For thousands of years, people all over the world have used birds like this to hunt. They train the birds to catch animals like rabbits and fly back to their owners with their catch.

It takes a very long time to train a bird this way, and these kinds of birds used to cost a lot of money to own. Because of this, in the past, hunting with a bird meant that you were very rich or had a lot of power. Today, many people still do it for fun, even if they are not very rich or very powerful. (Kayleen Hartman, Staff Writer)

你會想接近這隻鳥的鳥喙嗎？你可能認為鳥類是食用莓果、歌聲美妙的可愛動物，不過這可不是那種鳥。

這是一隻蒼鷹，是獵食較小型鳥類與老鼠等其他動物的鳥類之一。照片中的這隻鳥很年輕，但仍有這種鳥類都有的彎曲鳥喙。

這類的鳥會閃電攻擊，在動物趁隙逃跑之前，迅速飛到想大快朵頤的動物上頭。牠們用尖爪攫取動物，並用彎曲的利嘴撕裂身形較小的動物。

數千年以來，世界各地的人都利用這種鳥來打獵。人們訓練這些鳥捕捉兔子等動物，並帶戰利品飛回主人身邊。

像這樣訓練一隻鳥要花費很久時間，在過去要擁有這種鳥也所費不貲。正因為如此，從前帶著鳥一起打獵意味著你相當富裕，或是權力龐大。現今，許多人仍然基於好玩這樣做，即使他們不是有錢人或沒什麼權力。 （翻譯︰賴美君）

TODAY'S WORDS 今日單字 1. hunt v.i. /v.t. 獵捕 (lie4 bu3) 例: I don’t like hunting because I don’t like to kill animals. (因為我不喜歡殺害動物，所以不喜歡打獵。) 2. attack v.i. /v.t. 攻擊 (gong1 ji2) 例: When David came walking up the street, we attacked him with water balloons. (大衛走到街上時，我們用水球攻擊他。) 3. train v.i. /v.t. 訓練 (xun4 lian4) 例: Paul trained his dog to sit, lie down and "shake hands." (保羅訓練他的狗坐下、躺下以及「握手」。)

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