GOSHAWK. 21 



not more than one or two of us taken the young, and reared 

 them to be our pets, and taken no little pleasure in their beauty 

 and personal pride and preening cares ? Often, too, in a tree 

 may the nest oe found, and not seldom will it prove to be not 

 built by the Kestrels themselves, but found perhaps as many 

 other things are often said to be that certainly were never " lost 

 before they were " found " ready-made to their wants by some 

 luckless Crow or Magpie. And what nesting school-boy too 

 does not know the four or five eggs one of them often so much 

 less than the rest which are to be found in the nest ? Some- 

 times red all over, closely spotted with deeper red ; sometimes 

 blotched rather than spotted, and with large blotches; some- 

 times with a lighter ground-colour, but always tinged with red, 

 though otherwise not so unlike the Sparrow-hawk's as not to 

 remind one of that bird's eggs. I like to see, and I like to hear 

 the Kestrel, though it is no dainty song he sings. I like to see 

 him fly so steadily, statelily along, and then pause, and hover 

 his wings this moment moving rapidly, then as he sails off, 

 seeming to be as moveless as his body and next he rounds too so 

 oeautifully, and, after a moment's balancing, drops to the ground 

 with swift, but so evenly regulated an impulse, and securing his 

 mouse, sails off to feed his expectant young ones. Mice seem 

 to form a favourite, if not staple, article of their food ; but they 

 are not exclusive in their diet. An occasional small bird, hosts 

 of coleoptera or beetle-kind, cock-chafers in their season, grubs, 

 and even worms, are known to be readily eaten by them. As 

 intimated above, the species is everywhere familiar, and is alike 

 too beautiful and too useful to be so wantonly killed as it too 

 often is. Fig, 6, plate I. 



14. GOSHAWK (Astur palumbarius). 



We do not often see the Goshawk in any part of the kingdom, 

 and very rarely indeed, except in some parts of Scotland and in 

 Orkney. It, like the Peregrine, was in mach request for the 

 sport of Hawking : only, as its manner of flight was different 

 from that of the Falcon, it was used for the pursuit of different 

 species of game from the latter. Probably this really originated, 

 in the impulses of the Goshawk's own instinct, which leads it to 

 attack Hares and Rabbits, or birds which, like the Partridge and 

 Grouse, never voluntarily fly at any great height above the level 

 of the ground. One curious habit of this bird is that of waiting 

 patiently until some bird, which it has driven to covert, leaves 

 its shelter, when the pursuit after a pause of perhaps several 

 hours is immediately resumed, and probably carried to its pur- 

 posed result. Most of the other Hawks, when baffled in the way 

 noticed, very speedily relinquish all apparent thought or reco/- 



