WELL-KNOWN FEATHERED OUTLAWS 23 



We have seen this Hawk (the female) not only 

 strike but carry off a full-grown Wood-pigeon ; 

 though as a rule Buntings, Finches, and the smaller 

 birds furnish them with food. We are bound to 

 admit, however, that in the breeding season nothing 

 comes amiss to them, and it is then that they levy 

 a heavy toll from the chicks of the game-birds, there- 

 by justly incurring the keeper's wrath. 



One day in the spring of igoo, lying in some 

 rhododendrons growing in a shrubbery on the con- 

 fines of one of our southern woods, we witnessed 

 a serio-comic affair. We were watching a pair of 

 Chaffinches making their neat little home. The 

 cock was sitting on an oak branch, cheering his 

 busy mate with song, when a male Sparrow-hawk 

 came gliding over the bushes and seized him within 

 a few feet of us. A little cloud of feathers, one wild 

 shriek, and all was over, whilst Accipiter nisns bore 

 him off to the adjoining wood to devour at leisure. 

 Yet within the week that female Chaffinch had pro- 

 cured another mate and was incubating in the self- 

 same spot. 



So much for the Sparrow-hawk. Next on our list 

 comes the graceful little Windhover, as the Kestrel 

 is still called in many districts. Keepers, farmers, 

 and other classes must be short-sighted indeed to 

 kill, as they do, this most useful bird. No plunderer 

 of game he, unless exceptionally hard pressed for 

 food (we have once or twice caught him red-handed), 

 but an unceasing and never-tiring persecutor of the 

 agriculturist's pests — rats, for instance, and their 

 smaller cousins, the different species of mice. Watch 



