48 British Birds^ 



day's account, seems to be made of sticks, and lined 

 with wool. The Merlin, or Blue Hawk, as it is 

 usually called here, has no longer, as it used to have, 

 its stated nesting-places on our Danby moors. Still, 

 it is not extinct. It is a very bold and active Hawk. 

 — Fig 5, plate I. 



KESTREL— (F<^/^^ timiunculus). 



Also Windhover, Creshawk, Hoverhawk, Stannel 

 or Stannelhawk ; — query Stand-gale, as Montagu 

 writes one of its provincial names Stone-gall. Wind- 

 hover certainly suggests the meaning of Stand-gale, 

 and that word would be easily shortened into Stannel. 



Who has not heard the sharp, ringing, half-laugh- 

 ing cry of the Kestrel ? What nest-hunter has not 

 often been warned by that well-known sound, as he 

 came near some scarp of rocks, wood-beset, well 

 qualified to furnish some ledge or crevice to hold the 

 loosely-compacted structure of sticks and wool which 

 does duty for this dainty-looking Hawk's nest ? Yes; 

 and have not more than one or two of us taken the 

 young, and reared them to be our pets, and taken no 

 little pleasure in their beauty and personal pride and 

 preening cares ? Often, too, in a tree, may the nest 

 be found, and not seldom will it prove to have been 

 not built by the Kestrels themselves, but found — per- 

 haps as many other things are often said to be that 

 certainly were never " lost " before they were " found" 

 — ready-made to their wants by some luckless Crow 

 or Magpie. And what nesting school-boy, too, does 

 not know the four or five eggs — one of them often so 

 much less than the rest — which are to be found in the 



