THE HAWKS 191 



will often go up into the air in the way I have described. I 

 have seen a young bird who was hovering over a favourite 

 pasture fly away immediately an older bird came up, the 

 elder taking up exactly the same position in the air, hover- 

 ing over the very same spot on the marsh, soon making a 

 kill ; but his prey gave him a little trouble, for he hovered 

 thrice before he made a kill, for it is their custom to hover 

 every time their prey goes out of sight. This practice has 

 been mistaken as part of the mechanism of hovering : it is 

 not so. 



The kestrel will take a beat for days and days, when per- 

 haps he will change, going another beat ; but he will keep 

 about the same marshes for weeks and weeks. 



And in the spring-time you may come upon them court- 

 ing; indeed, I think they make love in the air. I have more 

 than once come upon a pair in the spring-time, the male 

 holding the female by his claws, both being about thirty 

 feet from the ground, and when they saw me they began 

 to descend with shrieks. Their feathers and wings were 

 ruffled, and on touching the ground they parted, the female 

 flying off across the marshes, the cock-bird soon following 

 her, shrieking as he flew. 



And about the end of May they either take an old rook's 

 nest or select some dark hole in a water-mill or chimne}^, or 

 a church steeple, where they lay their reddish brown eggs 

 and hatch their pretty, fierce-looking youngsters. One pair 

 has for four years laid in the same wooden box at the head 

 of a little skeleton- mill, though they have been robbed every 

 season. The last clutch I saw taken from this mill was on 

 a bright day — the first of July; their big, clear, bold eyes, 

 with their yellow waxlike rims, staring with dignified con- 

 tempt upon us. They had built no nest, the box bottom 

 serving their purpose. Thence we took the skeleton of a 

 frog and some bird's feathers we could not identify, besides 

 several pieces of field mice. 



One fenman I know tamed one of these fierce-looking 



