138 BIRDS OF LANCASHIRE. 



lining prepared when a nest in trees is occupied ; and it 

 is very probable that the birds roost in \\'inter near 

 where they intend to breed next spring, and that this 

 lining represents the accumulations of the interval. 

 Kestrels never build a nest for themselves, and always 

 appropriate a Magpie's or Carrion-Crow's of a previous 

 year, taking not the slightest trouble in repairing it. 

 The full number of eggs is six, but only five are laid in 

 many instances, and if the nest be robbed before the 

 whole are deposited, the birds simply move to the 

 nearest old one, perhaps not twenty yards away, and 

 there the remainder ara placed. The Kestrel begins 

 to sit about ten days earlier than the Sparrow-Hawk ; late 

 April or early May being the most usual time, though 

 fresh eggs may be taken from the middle of April to the 

 beginning of June. In many districts a continual 

 decrease is going on, owing to the efforts of the game- 

 keepers, and when the young have to be fed, there is no 

 doubt the parents are less particular, and that young 

 Pheasants or Partridges occasionally fall a pre}^ Mr. 

 ^Y. A. Durnford relates (ZooL, 1878) how he disturbed a 

 Kestrel which was carrying away a young Cuckoo, but 

 items of this sort seldom form part of its regular 

 pabulum. Dr. Skaife (Mag. Nat. Hist., 1838) remarks 

 on the evident good feeling which existed between a 

 colony of Starlings and a few pairs of Kestrels which 

 bred in the fissures and on the ledges of Alum Scar, 

 near Blackburn, and how the usual bustling activity of 

 the former became a precipitate flight for shelter when- 

 ever a Sparrow-Hawk appeared from the woods below. 

 In autumn and winter the Kestrel frequents the sand- 

 hills of the shore, and the low-lying moss-lands, feeding 

 on the mice which abound there, and Mr. C. E. Eeade 

 tells me that he once shot a specimen at Urmston whose 



