i9« Kestrel 



In te)i, beetles {Coleoptera), including Dor-beetles {Geotriipes 

 stercorarius) in quantity, Cock-chafers {Melolontha vulgaris), 

 Mid-summer-chafers or June-bugs [Rhizotrogus solstitialis), ground 

 beetles (species not identified), small black and brown beetles, 

 wing-case of bronze-beetle. 



One bird (female, Table I., No. lo), besides the remains of a 

 field-mouse, contained twenty-six quite good-sized stones. This 

 is the only occasion on which I have found stones inside a Raptor. 

 I mean stones of considerable size, and obviously gathered up by 

 the Hawk herself. 



Many of the strange things one finds in the crop and stomach 

 of a raptorial bird are really derived from the prey the}' have 

 swallowed. Thus, a game-chick will have grits in its gizzard, 

 possibly grains of corn and small insects in crop or gizzard, and these 

 may all reappear in the Hawk's stomach when the chick is in process 

 of digestion. A Little Owl contained several fragments of an acorn, 

 together with the remains of a farm-yard chicken six weeks old. 

 The chicken was, of course, the original proprietor of the acorn. 

 In almost every case of abnormal contents being found, one can 

 account for them through the food of the prey. 



But the case I am speaking of stands on quite a different footing. 

 The stones were much too large and much too numerous to have been 

 contained in any bird, either gallinaceous or passerine, likely to be 

 captured by a Kestrel, and the only reasonable supposition is that 

 the Kestrel deliberately picked these stones up herself and swallowed 

 them. I have never read of a similar case, and am at an entire loss 

 to know what the object of taking in stones could be, or what purpose 

 the stones were intended to serve. The stomach of a bird of prey 

 is in no way comparable with the muscular gizzard of a gallinaceous 

 bird ; the fleshy diet does not require to be put through a mill, 

 such as the Grouse, for example, has to subject the heather to before 

 it is passed into the intestine. The case is unique in my experience, 

 and I have no explanation to offer. 



Looking at Table I., and the more ordinary food found in the 

 Kestrel, I was rather struck by the number of small passerine birds, 

 up to the size of a Thrush, taken. 



Almost all writers emphasize the fact that the Kestrel's diet 

 in the main consists of small rodents, and in Southern Europe of 

 insects, while birds are seldom taken. Howard Saunders, in his 

 " Manual of British Birds," 1889, p. 356, writes : "In northern 

 countries the Kestrel preys chiefly on mice, birds being seldom taken ; 

 to the southward it feeds largely on beetles, grasshoppers and other 

 insects." The same error, as I think, is propagated by many other 

 well-known writers. 



As already stated, in the forty-nine birds which appear in 

 Table I., the crop and stomach of fourteen contained passerine 

 remains, and of twenty-one rodent remains, or a proportion of only 

 two to three in favour of the rodent diet. 



