KESTREL FALCON. 331 



mains of young larks, thrushes, lapwings, and several small birds, 

 both granivorous and slender-billed, together with the common 

 dung-beetle, many other coleoptera, and the earthworm. It is 

 also said to feed on lizards, and it has been known to carry off 

 young chickens. Mice it sometimes swallows entire, more 

 frequently breaks into two or three portions, but the birds, if 

 fledged, it generally plucks. One is surprised on opening the 

 stomach to find how large a mass it contains, rolled up into a 

 ball, and, if digestion has far advanced, composed externally of 

 hair and feathers, with the bones and teeth in the interior. 

 This mass of refuse is ejected by the mouth in pellets, as is 

 the practice with all the birds of this family. I have never 

 happened to see it pursue a bird in open flight ; but in such 

 districts as the Outer Hebrides, where if field mice exist, they 

 are extremely rare, it can have no other prey during the winter. 

 When advancing from one place to another, without search- 

 ing for food, the Kestrel flies at a considerable height, with 

 rapid flaps of its wings, and occasional sailings. In the neigh- 

 bourhood of its haunts it may often be seen wheeling in irre- 

 gular curves, nowhere more beautifully than when its breed- 

 ing-station is on some maritime cliff. On such occasions, as 

 well as when perched on a rock or tree, it frequently emits a 

 loud shrill cry, somewhat similar to the syllables plee, plee, plee, 

 or Mee, Jclee, klee, or, as the country people in the south of Scot- 

 land interpret it, keelie, keelie^ keelie. At the commencement 

 of the breeding season it is remarkably vociferous ; but when 

 traversing the fields in search of plunder it is seldom heard to 

 emit any cry. It resorts to rocks on the coast, or in the in- 

 terior, to ruined castles or other buildings, sometimes to towers 

 or steeples in the midst of towns, and frequently to trees in 

 flat wooded districts. It often takes possession of the deserted 

 nest of a crow or magpie, but in rocky tracts, and in the un- 

 woodcd parts of the country, it breeds on cliffs or on craggy 

 banks, usually scraping a slight cavity for its eggs. Those who 

 maintain that the Kestrel always breeds in trees, may be in- 

 formed that on the face of the Castle Rock of Edinburgh, fac- 

 ing Princes Street, there has been a Kestrel's nest for more 



