KESTREL. 93 



dead. They were both hen Kestrels. What could have been 

 the sudden cause of their rage? It was autumn, and there- 

 fore they had no nests.' In the next article, the following 

 is recorded by Mr. W. Peachey, of Northchapel, near Petworth: 

 'A few weeks ago, a man passing a tree, heard a screaming 

 from a nest at the top. Having climbed the tree and put 

 his hand into the nest, he seized a bird which proved to be 

 a Kestrel; and at the same instant a Magpie flew out on the 

 other side. The Kestrel, it appears, had the advantage in 

 being uppermost, and would probably have vanquished his 

 adversary, had he not been thus unexpectedly taken.' Two 

 instances are related by the late Frederick Holme, Esq., of 

 Corpus Christi College, Oxford, the one of a male Kestrel 

 having eaten the body of its partner, which had been shot, 

 and hung in the branch of a tree 'a piece of conjugal can- 

 nibalism, somewhat at variance with the proverb, that 'hawks 

 don't poke out hawks' eeii;' and the other as a set off, he 

 says of 'six of one, and half-a-dozen of the other,' a pair of 

 Kestrels in confinement having been left without their supper, 

 the male was killed and eaten by the female before morning.' 



In Yorkshire, the Kestrel is a common bird, as in most 

 parts of England. In Cornwall it appears to be rare. One, 

 a male, was shot, Mr. Cocks has informed me, at Trevissom, 

 in January, 1850, by Master Reed; and others at Penzance 

 and Swanpool, in 1846. In Scotland it is likewise generally 

 distributed. In Ireland it is also common throughout the 

 island. 



The debateable point respecting the natural history of the 

 Kestrel, is whether it is migratory or not. Much has been 

 written on both sides of this 'vexata qusestio;' and as much, 

 or more, one may take upon oneself to say, will yet be written 

 on the subject. My own opinion is against the idea of any 

 migration of the bird beyond the bounds of this country'. 

 Stress has been laid, in an argument in favour of such a supposed 

 movement, on the fact of the departure of the broods of young 

 Kestrels from the scene of their birth. But who could expect 

 them to remain in any one confined locality? Brood upon 

 brood would thus accumulate, in even more than what Mr. 

 Thornhill, in the 'Vicar of Wakefield,' calls a 'reciprocal du- 

 plicate ratio ;' a 'concatenation of self-existences,' which would 

 doubtless soon find a lack of the means of subsistence in a 

 neighbourhood calculated probably to afford sufficient food for 

 only a few pairs. Unless in the case of the Osprey, which must 



