22 SPRING 



purloined the family wash. We want to see more of our 

 wild birds again ; and their worst foe is not the gamekeeper 

 or the hill shepherd, but the collector of British rarities. 



By birds of prey we mean birds which spill red blood ; 

 we do not call the robin a bird of prey for eating worms, or 

 the flycatcher for ridding us of midges. A great part of the 

 attraction of this group of birds comes from the savagery of 

 their diet ; it gives a thrill to find the young peregrines lying 

 amid 'bones and blood,' and this is distantly but undeniably 

 akin to the hereditary fear of man for a man-eater. But this 



rather gruesome element in the habits of birds of prey is 

 balanced by the grace and prowess with which they go about 

 their predatory business. There are two main groups of 

 hawks, which may be called the dashers and the soarers. 

 Soarers include eagles, and vultures in countries which have 

 them, buzzards, kestrels, and kites. These are the birds 

 which wind a spiral up the wind, or ride on motionless vans 

 by the same cunning opposition of their living planes to its 

 current, or hover in the beautiful way of our own kestrel. 

 Most of them belong to the broad-winged group ; but the 

 kestrel, which is no mean soarer, is a long-winged hawk. 

 Partly the soarers ride aloft to spy for food as from a watch- 

 tower; the soaring eagle or vulture commands 'a radius of 



