THE FARMER'S FEATHERED FRIENDS. 65 



oeuvring) ; nine times out of ten the experiment ends 

 in failure. So much the better for those on whose 

 lands they come at various seasons. Plovers are 

 largely affected in their movements by the weather. 



The kestrel, the mouse-killing falcon, not only 

 gets shot, but insult is added to injury, for he is 

 nailed up to the end of the barn. The falcon glides 

 and hovers all the day, and until late in the evening, 

 catching mice and other small deer. The numbers 

 of large short -tailed field-mice, or voles, in some 

 chalky upland pastures, are simply startling. They 

 are vegetable feeders, and when full-grown are as 

 large as a half-grown rat ; if you examine the mouth 

 of one you will see it is like that of the hare. These, 

 with the fawn-coloured long- tailed field or wood 

 mouse, work sad havoc in farm gardens. The 

 kestrel kills them day by day, as he hovers and fans 

 over field after field. For this service he is made 

 heartily welcome to a charge of shot. I have a dim 

 recollection of a sage warning that formed a copy- 

 slip in my school days, " Put not temptation in the 

 way of youth." It applies to all ages, I fancy. 

 If the farmer's wife had not placed her brood of 

 chicks with their mother under the coop in the short 



