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NOTES ON THE BREEDING OF THE LESSER 

 KESTREL. 



BY 



F. N. CHASEN. 



Two species of Kestrels are found commonly in Macedonia. 

 Falco tinnnnculus is resident, but in most districts it would 

 appear to be numerically inferior to the smaller F. naumanni 

 (Lesser Kestrel), which is a so-called " summer " migrant 

 to the country, but which, in truth, spends the greater part 

 of the year in Macedonia, arriving from its winter quarters 

 early and departing thence late. 



The valley of the river Struma, or Struma plain, is par- 

 ticularly favoured by F. naumanni, and there the home life 

 of this bird can be studied with advantage — if not under the 

 most favourable circumstances. The salient features of 

 the breeding-habits of such a well-known species have, 

 naturally enough, been worked out, but the Lesser Kestrel 

 appears to be more adaptable and less conservative in its 

 habits than most Accipitres, and the conditions under which 

 it was met with by the present writer certainly differ in some 

 interesting points from those given in the accounts of quite 

 a number of its historians. 



In the spring of 1917 I happened to be living at Ormanli, 

 which is a small village lying between the river Struma and 

 the Rupel Pass, and a certain corner of this village must have 

 offered some special attraction to the Lesser Kestrels. This 

 selected locality consisted of the dilapidated mosque and 

 neighbouring priest's house (unoccupied), with numerous 

 dwellings of the ordinary native tjq^e in close proximity. 



As early as March 8th a pair of Kestrels were paying 

 marked attention to the mosque, but they had domestic 

 troubles from the beginning. A large number of Jackdaws 

 had taken up their abode in the courtyard and were always 

 disputing over every available nesting site in the neighbour- 

 hood. A pair of Little Owls spent days in moping in a spare 

 corner of the mosque, apparently resigned to their fate and 

 contented to have anywhere that the rowdy Jackdaws chanced 

 to leave them. In addition to these birds, dozens of Sparrows 

 and Starlings were quarrelling over the smaller nooks and 

 holes in every corner. A huge tree growing by the door of 

 the priest's house had already been appropriated by a pair 

 of Doves. When the Lesser Kestrels arrived, the com- 

 plications of this motley crowd were far too intricate for a 



