THE KITE. 119 



The Kite's most unpleasant habit is that of eating his 

 prey alive a trait which marks him as a bird accus- 

 tomed to tackle what can't hit him back ; since the 

 ' ' nobler' ' hawks have, in self-defence, to kill their more 

 powerful quarry, as quickly as possible. Altogether he is 

 not a nice bird, and one can quite understand how when 

 tame falcons and wild Kites were well known to our ances- 

 tors, the name of the latter bird became a common term of 

 abuse. For the Kite was once as common in England as 

 m India : a Bohemian visitor noticed in the fifteenth cen- 

 tury that he had never seen so many Kites anywhere as 

 round London Bridge an observation that throws a lurid 

 light on the City sanitation. The common European 

 Kite, however, is not exactly the same bird as his relative 

 here. Milvus govinda, our urban sanitator, is smaller than 

 Milvus ictinus of Europe, which is much redder in colour, 

 especially on the tail, and whiter on the head in fact a 

 finer bird altogether. 



This bird, despised as he was generally, was royal game 

 in falconry ; for, coward as the Kite is, to capture him 

 taxes the powers of a falcon to the utmost, and one that 

 could perform the feat was deemed fit for "a prince's 

 pleasant sport." The Kite when pursued by the falcon 

 " takes the sky," and both birds rise to a great height, the 

 quarry endeavouring, as long as he may, to shift from the 

 fatal grip of his more powerful enemy. Indeed, in one 

 case in which King James I. was induced personally to 

 witness the flight at a Kite of a couple of falcons which had 

 been procured for him, both pursuers and pursued went out 



