SPAEEOW HAWK — KITE. 29 



Bold and daring- in its habits, it will resort in winter day 

 after day to some outlying field-barn or stackyard, attracted 

 by the numerous small birds drawn there by the good supply 

 of food, and thus it often falls a victim to the gun brought 

 up for its reception ; again, its habit of beating along the 

 hedgerows often brings it unexpectedly on to the gunner as it 

 skims over the top of the hedge. Keepers too wage a bitter 

 war against the Sparrow Hawk, and it must be confessed 

 that its innocence cannot be pleaded, as in the case of the 

 Kestrel : still it might be spared to some extent if only 

 to keep the Sparrows and Starlings a little in check. In 

 summer the Sparrow Hawk retires to the woods and quiet 

 spinneys to breed, but in winter it is more widely diffused, 

 resorting chiefly to those places most frequented by the 

 various small birds ; its apparent greater abundance at the 

 latter season is probably due in a great measure to this. 



n 

 THE KITE. 



Milviis ictinus. 



The Kite must have been a common bird in the great 

 woods of Oxfordshire even as late as the early part of the 

 present century, but its extermination began soon after that 

 date, and the rapidity with which its extinction was effected 

 is most remarkable, since little more than a third of the 

 century had passed before the last nest known to have been 

 built in the county was taken. 



About the beginning of the century these grand birds 

 might be seen any day by persons taking a country walk 

 (Birds of Berks and Bucks, p. 163), and even over Oxford city 

 itself. Osman, the old bird-stuffer of St. Aldate's, Oxford, 

 then over seventy years of age, told the Rev. Murray A. 

 Mathew about the year 1 855-6 that he had seen three or four 

 Kites sailing in the air at once over Folly Bridge when he 

 was a boy (M. A. Mathew in lit.), and there are still those 



