At Home with Wild Nature 



shooting, near a large stretch of water, saw to his 

 astonishment a merlin cross the lough, where it was two 

 miles wide, with a hoody crow in its talons. Per- 

 sonally, I have never known this little robber of the air 

 kill anything larger than a dunlin or snipe. As a rule, 

 it breeds amongst the heather in moorland solitudes and 

 feeds its chicks largely upon meadow pipits, wheatears, 

 skylarks and other small birds. In the winter, members 

 of this species scatter over the country, when individuals 

 may sometimes be seen even in the outer suburbs of 

 London town itself. 



Just as an example of the adaptability of birds I 

 may mention that I have found a hoody crow nesting 

 in deep heather and a merlin sitting on a clutch of eggs 

 in a hoody 's old nest built in a birch tree, high up on 

 the Dovre Feld in Norway. Whenever the merlin 

 left or returned home she was mobbed by scores of 

 fieldfares (breeding close round her), whose raucous 

 voices, raised in angry protest, filled the air with an 

 unpleasant clamour. 



The kestrel, or windhover, is by far the best-known 

 hawk in the British Islands. I have seen it as close to 

 the centre of London as New Cross on the one side and 

 Highgate on the other, and have counted seven 

 specimens on one side of the line in a journey between 

 Euston and Manchester. On the London and North 

 Western Railway kestrels appear to have developed a 

 positive weakness for sitting on the telegraph wires and 

 watching express trains flash past. I have seen them in 

 the act again and again. 



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