ITS HABITS. 255 



been shot, the exiivia of beetle ; parts of dung beetle 

 being found in considerable numbers show that it is also 

 insectivorous as well as carnivorous. The kestrel is 

 also accused in Scotland of carrying off young chickens. 

 Mr. Macgillivray's translation of Buffon's notice of 

 the predatory habits of this bird, is too interesting to 

 be omitted. " The cresserele," says he, " is the most 

 common rapacious bird in most of the French provinces, 

 and especially in Burgundy. There is not an old castle 

 or a tower which it does not frequent and inhabit. It is 

 particularly in the morning and evening that it is seen 

 flying about these old buildings, and that it is heard 

 more frequently than seen. It has a hurried cry of 

 ' pli, pli, pli,' or ' pri, pri, pri,' which it incessantly re- 

 peats as it flies, which frightens all the little birds, on 

 Avhich it darts like an arrow, and seizes with its talons. 

 If it happens to miss them at the first plunge, it pur- 

 sues them into the houses, fearless of danger. I have 

 more than once seen my people take a cresserelle, and 

 the little bird which it was pursuing, by closing the 

 window of the room, or a door of a gallery which was 

 more than two hundred yards from the old tower whence 

 it had issued. When it has seized and carried off the 

 bird, it kills and plucks it very neatly before eating it. 

 it does not take such trouble with mice, for it swallows 

 the smaller whole, and tears the others to pieces. All 

 the soft parts of the mouse are digested in the stomach 

 of this bird, but the skin is rolled up so as to form a 

 little pellet, which it voids by the mouth, and not by 

 the intestines, for its excrements are almost liquid and 

 whitish. On putting these pellets, which it vomits, 

 into hot water to soften and unravel them, you find 



