HAWKS AND OWLS. 9 



under a blackthorn bush on a lonely plateau on the Cotswold 

 Hills when a hare came cantering along the top of a stone 

 wall, and in close attendance was an old male harrier looking 

 brilliantly blue in the sunlight,, who swept backwards and 

 forwards, occasionally stooping at the hare, a full grown one, 

 in a way that made him wince with fear, but never, so far as 

 I could see, actually striking him. A worse place for 

 repelling attacks of a hawk than a stone " dyke " we should 

 hardly think there could be, yet the hare ambled by within 

 a few yards, " dodging every time the falcon's wings touched 

 him, until at last they were lost in a- hollow, and though 

 I followed at my best pace I never saw how the fray ended." 



There can be little doubt but that although game is not 

 its chief food the hen harrier will tackle anything not too 

 manifestly beyond its powers. 



Sparrowhawks and kestrels hold their own in spite of all 

 keepers can do. This is partly, perhaps, owing to the fact 

 that they are not regarded as quite so harmful to game as some 

 of the larger species, and also because they breed as often as 

 not in out of the way places, ivy-covered cliffs, ruined 

 towers, and the like, where they do not come conspicuously 

 under game-rearers' attention. 



Unquestionably the commonest of all our British hawks, 

 and with little doubt the most useful, the kestrel, a hawk of 

 no repute in the old days, is perhaps more numerous in our 

 shires than all his kindred put together. Round by the 

 South Foreland and the white Dover cliffs we find them in 

 abundance, hunting mice and small birds just above high 

 water mark. There are plenty, too, all down the valley of 

 the Thames, and especially wherever there are scarps over- 

 hung with hazel or disused quarries. The bird -does practi- 

 cally no harm to game. It is almost wholly a fur-hunting 

 hawk, and the farmer who suffers them to be destroyed 

 deserves to be overrun with field mice, and to kill something 

 like a thousand in a day's wheat thrashing, as I have known 

 to happen where kestrels have been abolished. Small birds 



