198 FIELD-STUDIES OF RARER BIRDS 



there was still a remnant left in the western Mid- 

 lands, more than a few in Scotland, and a good 

 number in Wales. To Ireland the Kite has always 

 been but a casual migrant, and it is said that it 

 never bred there. 



Then the demand for salmon-flies, made from 

 its tail-feathers, combined with more over-zealous 

 ' keeping," shortly rang the Kite's death -knell in 

 Scotland, and the same thing happened in the 

 western Midlands, but parts of Wales, at all events 

 up to about 1880, could still muster a fair show. 

 Here again, the petty farmers, purely dependent 

 on their scant freehold and farm produce for a 

 living, naturally failed to regard the Kite as an 

 object of merit, joy, and beauty. They knew full 

 well that, whenever a brood of goslings or ducklings 

 (which the Kate often plucked from the water) 

 caught the lynx eye of roving Kite, their slender 

 incomes would still further be reduced. Conse- 

 quently, the Kite, even in its last refuges, became 

 scarcer and scarcer. Old birds were shot from the 

 nest, young were shot in it ; in fact, no pains were 

 spared to get rid of them, and a friend of mine well 

 remembers a brace of nearly -fledged young Kites 

 tied together and flung down in a field to entice 

 their parents within shot of a keeper concealed in 

 a neighbouring hedge, while, at one farm, close 

 to which a pair were breeding, the tenant, having 

 no gun, in desperation painted his goslings red, in 

 the hope of checking the raids of the Kite. 



