KESTREL. 201 



with jaws, teetli, and various bones of mice. In that 

 of the second, the substances were simihir, and among 

 them were the jaws of the short tailed-field mouse. In 

 the third was also a mass of hair, and bones of glires, 

 but with the addition of two feet quite entire of a very 

 young lapwing. The stomach of a female examined 

 on the 29th June contained a mass of remains of young 

 birds, of which the wings were more entire than the 

 rest, and covered with shooting feathers. There vras 

 the entire head of a young bird, apparently a lark, the 

 upper mandible of a young thrush, and the gizzard of 

 a small bird filled with fragments of coleoptera. In 

 the middle of July, I found in the stomach of a male 

 fragments of birds partially digested. They had all 

 been torn to pieces, and many of the bones broken. 

 There were two birds, both young, their gizzards filled 

 with insects and seeds. They were slender billed, and 

 of different species. It was in this individual that I 

 found the two very distinct coeca already mentioned. 

 Whether the kestrel ever seizes full grown small birds, 

 as it flies along the hedges or over the fields, I have 

 not been able to ascertain by my own observation, al- 

 though I have been credibly informed that it does. My 

 friend Mrs Colonel Macneil informs me, that in Harris 

 this species often carries off young chickens, as well as 

 small birds ; and there it certainly cannot prey on field- 

 mice, which, if they occur at all, are extremely rare. 



The cry of the kestrel is loud, shrill and clear, se- 

 veral times repeated ; but it seldom utters it except 

 in the neighbourhood of the station w liich it has select- 

 ed for its retreat, and at the commencement of the 

 breeding season. So far as I have observed, it retires 



