32 BRITISH BIRDS, THEIR EGGS AND NESTS. 
hawk ;—query, Stand-gale, as Montagu writes one of its provin- 
cial names Stone-gall. Windhover certainly suggests the meaning 
of Stand-gale, and that word would be easily shortened into 
Stannel. 
Who has not heard the sharp, ringing, half-laughing 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 be not 
built by the Kestrels themselves, but found—perhaps 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 nest? Some- 
times red all over, closely spotted with deeper red; sometimes 
blotched rather than spotted, and with large blotches; some- 
times with a lighter ground-colour, but always tinged with red, 
though otherwise not so unlike the Sparrow-hawk’s as not to 
remind one of that bird’s eggs. I like to see, and I like to hear 
the Kestrel, though it is no dainty song he sings. [ like to see 
him fly so steadily, statelily along, and then pause, and hover— 
nis wings this moment moving rapidly, then as he sails off, 
seeming to be as moveless as his body—and next he rounds too sa 
beautifully, and, after a moment’s balancing, drops to the ground 
vith swift, but so evenly regulated an impulse, and securing his 
