THE WINDHOVER. 267 



presence ; and scarcely have I time to fix my eyes upon the tower, 

 ere the intruder is off with a starling in his talons. 



Did the nurseryman, the farmer, and the country gentleman, know 

 the value of the windhover's services, they would vie with each other 

 in offering him a safe retreat. He may be said to live almost entirely 

 on mice ; and mice, you know, are not the friends of man ; for they 

 bring desolation to the bee-hive, destruction to the pea-bed, and 

 spoliation to the corn-stack. Add to this, they are extremely 

 injurious to the planter of trees. The year 1815 was memorable, in 

 this part of the county of York, for swarms of field-mice exceeding 

 all belief. Some eight years before this, I had planted two acres of 

 ground with oaks and larches in alternate rows. Scarcely any of the 

 oaks put forth their buds in the spring of 1816 ; and, on my examin- 

 ing them, in order to learn the cause of their failure, I found the 

 bark entirely gnawed away under the grass, quite close to the earth, 

 whilst the grass itself, in all directions, was literally honeycombed 

 with holes, which the mice had made. In addition to the bark of 

 young oaks, mice are extremely fond of that of the holly tree : I have 

 hollies which yet bear the marks of having been materially injured 

 by the mice in winter. Apple-trees, when placed in hedgerows, are 

 often attacked by mice, and, in many cases, are much injured by 

 them. I prize the services of the windhover hawk, which are 

 manifest by the quantity of mice which he destroys ; and I do all in 

 my power to put this pretty bird on a good footing with the game- 

 keepers and sportsmen of our neighbourhood. Were this bird 

 properly protected, it would repay our kindness with interest ; and 

 we should then have the windhover by day, and the owls by night, 

 to thin the swarms of mice which overrun the land. 



As the windhovers make no nest, they are reduced to the necessity 

 of occupying, at second-hand, that of another bird. I once made 

 the experiment to try if a windhover would take possession of a nest 

 newly built ; and, in order to prepare the way, I singled out the 

 nest of a carrion crow. As soon as the crow had laid her third egg, 

 I ascended the tree, and robbed the nest. In less than a week after 

 this, a pair of windhovers took to it ; and they reared a brood of 

 young in its soft and woolly hollow. The windhover is a social bird, 

 and, unlike most other hawks, it seems fond of taking up its abode 



