FALCO TINNUNCULUS. 121 



and other rooms in the low flat which were infested with these 

 ugly insects — and were valuable in clearing the house — their 

 legitimate use in creation being killers of vermin. They were 

 as assiduous in watching and destroying them in the house as if 

 they had been intently hovering above a mouse or a cockchafer 

 in the field. 



In 1855 I took a young kestrel from the nest and trained it. 

 It flew about the garden and the whole city, always returning 

 for food. It was singularly sprightly and playful. When in a 

 carpeted room it stretched out its legs, seized the carpet with its 

 claws and beak, and ran about the room as playful as a kitten. 

 I had it upwards of a year, flying about quite at liberty. One 

 day it alighted on a house in North Street, when a man, 

 thinking it was a " wild hawk," ran for his gun and shot it, 

 much to my regret — the usual fate of wild pets. 



To prove that it feeds on birds, as well as mice and insects, 

 I have seen it capturing small birds for prey. On May 4th, 

 1861, when on an excursion taking notes of our feathered 

 friends at Knockhill Wood, I saw a kestrel strike a chaffinch, 

 and bear it off in its talons. It was also seen by a carrion 

 crow, when a most exciting and prolonged chase took place — 

 soaring, wheeling, darting up and down, like a skua gull after 

 a tern — until the kestrel, sick of the hunt, or encumbered by its 

 victim, dropped it. The crow darted down and bore it off in 

 its bill, and flew with it into the wood. But to show that birds 

 have not the same dread of it as they have of the sparrow-hawk 

 — I saw a kestrel attacked by two pigeons when flying over a 

 large dovecot near Kinaldy. They dashed at it, as lapwings do 

 at the carrion crow when near their nest. They mounted up, 

 until the kestrel seemed no bigger than a lark. The pigeons, 

 strong pinioned though they were, being no match for the falcon 

 in its own aerial domain, gave up the chase, and descended to 

 their humble cot. As a rule, birds are not so afraid of the kestrel 

 as they are of the hawk. I have heard the lark sing in the 

 air, while the kestrel was hovering close by looking for mice or 

 beetles, and the linnet sing his sweet little song on the whin 

 below; nor does the chaffinch sound his deep "pink ! pink !" 

 of fear, or the sparrow cease his loud chitter on the hedge, or 

 the brood-hen give her warning "cluck" of dread, when it 

 appears above the barnyard, as they do when its more rapacious 

 cousin, the sparrow-hawk, glides like an evil spirit amongst 

 them. Macgillivray says : — " The chaffinch and the sparrow 

 continue picking up the seeds at the barn door, and the 

 I — 



