Bird Notes and News 



47 



its game the Kestrel usually keeps to about 

 fifty feet above the ground. 



Like other members of the Accipitrine 

 family, the Kestrel is no architect, and its 

 nest may be the disused abode of some 

 other bird, Crow or Ringdove perhaps, or 

 •ome edge or fissure of a stony crag or 

 •liff, or in the fastness of some wild highland 

 glen. The eggs, four to six, usually laid 

 in April or May, are of a pale reddish white, 

 with markings of a dull brown-red colour, 

 and in shape they are nearly circular. 



It is a great mistake to look upon this 

 little Falcon as destructive to other birds ; 

 tMs is not the case. It is true that here 

 •nd there a certain Kestrel may develop a 

 penchant for young pheasants, and that 

 occasionally small birds are preyed upon, 

 but their menu is chiefly composed of mice, 

 field voles, and other small rodents, including 

 grasshoppers and other insects. 



It would be well for all farmers to realise 

 what an ally they have in the Windhover, 

 whose capacity for a diet of mice, etc., 

 is very large. The undigested portions of 

 their food are thrown up in castings as is 

 the maimer of all Falcons. 



A pair of Kestrels hatched out their 

 family in safety this year (1916) on the face 

 of a crag overhanging a beautiful and wild 

 valley in Perthshire. Their screeching cry 

 could be heard throughout the day till 

 late evening ; whilst the birds, four in 

 number, were constantly to be seen darting 

 from out the rock and flying to and fro. A 

 tertain amount of family dissension seemed 

 to take place, for the young birds were 

 often to be seen fighting in mid-air. The 

 hayfield in front of the rock was weU 

 quartered for food supply, the young birds 

 greeting with lusty cries the return of their 

 mother. 



BIRDS IN THE FIELDS. 



" I CEOSSED a stubble field the other day, 

 and was astonished at the number of birds 

 that rose from it. There were hundreds 

 of them of such common kinds as Sparrows, 

 Chaffinches, Linnets, Redpolls, Hedge- 

 sparrows, Greenfinches, and Yellowhammers. 

 And yet the ground from which they rose 

 seemed very unpromising. In summer time 

 it had been a field of oats, and now nothing 

 remained but the long rows of stubble 

 with the brown earth between them. Here 

 and there, where the crop had been laid 

 and where it cut badly, were flattened-out 

 masses of straw, but these places were not 

 particularly sought out by the birds. 



" But there was really no mystery about 

 their acti\atie3. The black ground between 

 the rows of stubble in any cornfield is 

 heavily sprinkled with seed of the many 

 different kinds of weeds that thrive among 

 com crops. Without exception these weeds 

 are great seed producers. A single plant of 

 some of them is capable of growing and 

 scattering hundreds of thousands of them, 

 and the least prolific produces in thousands, 

 and will have done well by its kind if one 

 of its thousands survives and 3nelds a plant 

 next year. All these seeds are earth- 

 coloured. So to our eyes they are invisible. 

 But to the eyes of the birds all those in- 

 visible seeds are visible, and they pick them 

 up all through the short working day with 

 hardly a pause. '»\ hat kind of fields the 

 farmers would have next summer if there 

 were no birds to work on them for several 

 months a year at weed-seed destruction may 

 be conjectured. . . . Were they absent the 

 surface layer would be turned over by the 

 plough, with all its seeds upon it, to lie 

 safely in waiting, and most of them have an 

 astonishing power of biding their time. But 

 durmg the months that the ground is exposed 

 the birds work so effectually upon it that 

 not one seed in a thousand survives the 

 ordeal. The indiscriminate hatred of birds 

 shown by some farmers is a misdirected 

 emotion. With few exceptions the seed 

 eaters, not less than the insect eaters, are 

 their very good servants, and in the winter 

 their whole life is devoted to the work of 

 destroying the great robbers of the soil's 

 fertfiity.'' — X. Y. Z. in the Dundee Advertiser 

 (Nov. 11th, 1916). 



