THE kp:strels. 



209 



umberland. I can also add a record from near London, for a 

 few years ago a beautiful female bird was brought to me at the 

 British Museum in the flesh. It had been shot near Nunhead 

 on the previous day, having flown into a tree near some pigeon- 

 shooting grounds. I did not know at the time that any par- 

 ticular interest attached to the records of the Red-footed Kes- 

 trel in the South of England, and omitted to take dorm full 

 particulars. 



Three specimens have been shot in Scotland, and one was 

 procured in Co. Wicklow in Ireland in 1832. 



Range outside the British Islands. — The Red-footed Kestrel is a 

 bird of Eastern Europe and Western Siberia, being found over 

 the greater part of Russia, and as far east as Krasnoyarsk. It 

 breeds also in Hungary, and has occurred as far north as 65^ 

 in Finland, as well as in the south of Sweden. Professor Menz- 

 bier thinks that an extension of its range to the northern pro- 

 vinces of Russia has taken place within the last fifty years, and 

 in places in the south of Russia, such as the steppes of Oren- 

 burg, where the Red-footed Kestrel used to breed freely, it 

 has been ousted to a great extent by an influx of Lesser Kes- 

 trels of late years. The winter home of the present species 

 is in South Africa, to which it migrates in immense flocks 

 along with Hobbies and Lesser Kestrels. In Eastern Siberia 

 its place is taken by an allied species, with white under wing- 

 coverts, called C. amnrensis, which winters also in South Africa, 

 but is there found chiefly on the Zambesi and in the Transvaal, 

 and seems to preserve, even in its winter home, its more eastern 

 habitat. 



Habits. — ^This little Kestrel is one of the prettiest of all the 

 Falcons, and is remarkable for the difference in colour be- 

 tween the sexes, which is greater than in the majority of 

 Birds of Prey. The food of the Red-footed Kestrel con- 

 sists almost entirely of insects, which it catches and devours 

 on the wing, such as dragon-flies, beetles, moths, and grass- 

 hoppers, while in company with other birds it follows the 

 swarms of locusts in South Africa. In all its ways it is a Kes- 

 trel, and has the same querulous cry. In its nesting, as well 

 as on its migrations, it seems to be gregarious, for it is often 

 found breeding in company. 



