CHAPTER VII 

 WILD BIRDS 



ALTHOUGH birds range over a much wider area than four-looted 

 animals, they are mostly restricted to certain limits of country, 

 food being the all-important factor combined with convenient 

 places for refuge and breeding in the immediate location. This 

 applies to the resident denizens of the woods, fields, and other 

 tracts of country peculiarly suited to the respective species, which, 

 beyond separating for nesting, are not given to leave their domiciles 

 for other purposes than the procuring of food and exercise of their 

 bodily powers. But birds, like everything in nature, are given to 

 change of location through the interference of man with their 

 natural requirements and adaptations, and while some possess 

 facilities for conforming to the new order of things, a number of 

 species are not so fitted for what may be termed cultured necessi- 

 ties, and hence are obliged to leave and find out, if possible, suit- 

 able quarters for continuance of existence. These are matters 

 the cultivator is apt to overlook, the changed state of nature in 

 bringing land into cultivation inducing a new order of affairs in 

 respect of bird-life in the location. 



RESIDENT 

 INSECTIVOROUS AND HARMLESS 



KESTKEL or WINDHOVER. The" Kestrel does a considerable 

 amount of good by killing mice and voles, which form its chief 

 food, and in consequence is of great service to the forester, farmer, 

 and gardener. In a certain agricultural district bordering on moor- 

 land with extensive woods of mature growth and several young 

 plantations, the gamekeeper rearing thousands of pheasants annu- 

 ally, partridges, and grouse (on the moorland) plentiful, hares 

 not scarce, and rabbits superabundant averred that kestrels never 

 interfered with either winged or ground game, and to his credit 

 not one had been shot or captured in a hawk trap during his fifty 

 years' experience on the estate. But may not kestrels acquire a 



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