192 Food of Falconidae 



Kestrel is absolutely harmless to game-birds. Others have said 

 that while he mav take an occasional chick, the good he does far 

 out-balances the evil, and that the bird should be strictly protected. 

 Very few writers admit that the Kestrel does any serious harm to 

 the game-preserver. On the other side, game-keepers on estates 

 where game is reared by hand on a large scale, tell a very different 

 story. They paint the bird's misdeeds in the most lurid colours, 

 and they look on the Kestrel as one of their worst enemies, and in 

 many cases treat him accordingly. No doubt the naturalist 

 minimizes and the keeper exaggerates the harm done to game by 

 this hawk. It was to procure definite evidence on this question 

 that I collected a rather large series of skins, and the results of the 

 examination of their crops and stomachs I am bringing before my 

 readers. It is, I am afraid, an exceptionally dull subject, but one of 

 considerable importance. 



The food found in the crop and stomach is positive evidence, 

 and very valuable as far as it goes, provided it is fairly used. Where 

 only one or two specimens are obtained, especially if these come 

 from the same locality, the evidence is often insufficient and 

 sometimes absolutely misleading. I have a specimen of a female 

 Long-tailed Duck, shot (July 27th, i8gi) off the Suffolk coast, whose 

 crop and stomach were crammed with barley ! The Long-tailed 

 Duck is rather a scarce winter visitor to the Suffolk coast, and is 

 extremely rare in any of the summer months. It is a pure di\-ing- 

 Duck feeding in the ordinary way on shell-fish, but in this instance 

 was full of barley. I don't suppose anyone, before or since, ever 

 recognised barley as one of the foods of this essentially marine 

 diving-Duck, anywhere or at any season. About the same period 

 I obtained three or four Common Scoters (" black Ducks ") off the 

 same part of the coast. They, too, are marine diving-Ducks, feeding 

 entirely on shell-fish of all sorts, but in this instance I found 

 them full of barley and nothing else. It happened that I knew 

 the explanation of these strange findings. A small iron steamship, 

 " The Arndillv," was wrecked off Thorpe Ness ; she was laden 

 with barley in bulk. The vessel broke up very slowly, and the 

 grain was washing out of her holds for months, with every 

 ebb and flow of the tide. 



Large flocks of Scoters were in the habit of diving over this ground 

 for their normal shell-fish diet, and with them this chance visitor, 

 the Long-tailed Duck. Of a sudden they found the bed of the sea 

 strewn with a plentiful supply of barley, as well as the shell-fish 

 they were in the habit of gathering. They sampled the grain, 

 greatly approved, gave up their shell-fish and stuck to the barley 

 for the next three months. A case of treasure-trove and an entirely 

 abnormal diet for these shell-fish feeding birds. 



And so I think the rearing-field with its thousands of young 

 chicks, has a similar effect on the Kestrel. He comes for the mice ; 

 one day takes a chick and finds it a satisfactory diet, and for the 



