REARING AND PROTECTION. 75 



four-footed vermin, determined to keep watch for the 

 aggressor, when, after some time, a moorhen was seen 

 walking about near the copse ; the keeper, supposing it only 

 came to eat the young pheasants' food, did not shoot it, 

 until he saw the moorhen strike a young pheasaut, which 

 it killed immediately and devoured, except the leg and 

 wing bones. The remains agreed exactly with eight found 

 before." 



Lord Lilford, writing in " Dresser's Birds of Europe," 

 says: "I look upon the waterhen as an enemy to the game- 

 preserver, not only from the quantity of pheasant food which 

 it devours, but from the fact that it will attack, kill, and eat 

 young birds of all sorts. The bird is a great favourite of 

 mine, and I should be sorry to encourage its destruction, but 

 I am persuaded that it is a dangerous neighbour to young 

 game birds " ; and in his " Birds of Northamptonshire," he 

 adds, " We cannot acquit them of the charge of a very 

 pugnacious and destructive tendency amongst their own and 

 other species of birds, and they are most certainly bad neigh- 

 bours for young pheasants and partridges, as they not only 

 consume a good deal of the food intended for game birds, 

 but will now and then capture and devour the birds them- 

 selves." 



The common kestrel, or windhover, so well-known as a 

 destroyer of field mice and rats, has also been accused of 

 occasionally attacking young pheasants. Mr. J. H. Gurney, 

 of Northrepps Hall, Norwich, writes as follows : <f Mr. 

 Stevenson, in his article on the kestrel in the ' Birds of 

 Norfolk/ remarks: 'That some kestrels carry off young 

 partridges as well as other small birds during the nesting 

 season, is too well authenticated as a fact for even their 

 warmest advocates to gainsay/ For many years I have 

 endeavoured to collect reliable information on this point, and 

 I am convinced of the correctness of Mr. Stevenson's opinion 

 above quoted ; but there is this difference between the 

 sparrowhawk and the kestrel in their habits of preying on 



