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is very easily tamed, the sparrow hawk is of a very fierce, 
untameable disposition, and though I have had young ones given 
me, I never could tame them. 
The Kite, ‘‘Common”’ Kite, as it is sometimes called, is a very 
rare bird now. The old inhabitants at Canterbury used to see this 
beautiful bird sailing along over the Sturry Marshes, and there are 
some specimens in the Canterbury Museum that were probably shot 
in the neighbourhood. One of these birds was seen in 1867, and 1 
believe one has been seen since, but it is a very rare bird now 
everywhere. Pity it is indeed that so many of the Falconide‘are so 
ruthlessly destroyed by the game keepers ; the rare specimens may 
be found in some of our local Museums, in glass cases, ghosts of 
their former selves, whose glaring eyes and distorted forms seem 
to cast a mournful and reproachful glance on the human or inhuman 
visitors. What was their crime? Why so ruthlessly exterminated ? 
Ask the Game Keeper, he will tell you! Ask the Squire, and he 
will tell you! They were the enemies of the Partridge or the 
Pheasant. But ask the Partridge, and if he could speak, he 
would tell you he had greater enemies than the Kite. Man was 
his great enemy. Fifty or a hundred years ago in every farm in 
Kent the Partridge found his home; but now, only where he 
is strictly preserved is he found in any numbers. Why is this? 
The hedges are cut down, and prowling cats, rooking boys, and 
embryo sportsmen are constantly on the look out for what they 
can get to kill and destroy. Yes, Man is the enemy, his selfish 
instincts have prompted the slaughter. The Fox is ten times more 
destructive than the Kite, and it abounds because it affords sport 
to man, and the fox hunter is privileged. I will not grudge them 
their sport, though my chickens suffer. I only ask for reciprocity. 
I should like the Peregrine Falcon, the Kite, and the Kagle to have 
some protection afforded them, and if the gamekeepers and county 
gentlemen were better instructed in Natural History, they would 
see the uselessness of destroying all the Faleonida. Those who 
know best about the habit of the Kite tell us it feeds, for the 
most part, on mice and ignoble game. 
The Buzzards, again, are getting very scarce, though most 
useful birds. They are occasionally seen in our marshes, and were 
rather numerous during the German and French war; it was 
supposed they were driven from the woods by the soldiers. I had 
one brought me which had been shot at, but only stunned ; it soon 
recovered the shock, and I kept it some time in confinement ; it 
was very voracious, all sorts of garbage, fish, frogs, snakes, &c., 
affording it a dainty meal. I think it fell a victim to its voracity, 
as I gave it one day a snake three feet in length, which it 
swallowed whole, commencing with the head, and it also gorged 
itself with fat pork. 
