LOCAL OBSERVATION 27 



powerful feet as the kestrel does not more often pick 

 up birds from the trees, bushes, and in air. Of course, 

 we know that he takes a certain number on the ground. 

 I have only twice in my life seen a kestrel go for a 

 bird with apparently murderous intention : * in the first 

 instance at a missel thrush, which baffled him entirely 

 in a thick tree, and as I believe, scared him off by chatter ; 

 in the second instance, curiously enough very near the 

 same place, I was standing forward under a fence about 

 up to my shoulder for partridges, and a covey rose at 

 perhaps five hundred yards from me on a big pasture 

 field, and were coming skimming the ground towards me, 

 when one of the kestrels that I had noticed circling and 

 hovering high in air, shut its wings and made a really 

 grand stoop at these birds (they were hardly big enough 

 to shoot), and put the whole lot except the old cock 

 (who came on to me and met his fate) into some long 

 grass and rushes. The stoop was so fine that I thought 

 that I must have been deceived as to the stooper, but 

 there was in fact no mistake whatever about it. 



" Do your redwings suffer from the kestrel in the air ? 

 And do you notice any other birds taking the holly berries ? 

 We have very few hollies in this neighbourhood, and I 

 cannot discover that any birds save redwings, and rarely 

 other Turdi, even touch them." l 



1 To E. G. B. Meade- Waldo, Esq. 



* The Kestrel or Wind-hover (Falco tinnunculus), like the barn-owl, 

 habitually feeds on mice and voles. 



