300 JOURNAL, BOMB AY NATURAL HIST. SOCIETY, Vol. XXVII. 



ground, calls for no haste, whereas a mole cricket, or 

 a lizard, may find a hole to disappear into any mo- 

 ment, and requires speedy attention. 



It is by watching the " hoverers " (the Osprey, 

 The Short-Toed Eagle, the Black-winged Kite and 

 the Kestrel) that one begins to realise what marvellous 

 eyesight the birds of prey are gifted with. When one 

 sees a Kestrel hovering some 500 ft. above the earth 

 and sees it drop to rise again with nothing visible in 

 its talons, and as it flies slowly up one notices the head 

 bend down and the claws come forward to meet the 

 head and a couple of tiny, semi-transparent wings 

 flutter to earth, one knows that the object which 

 attracted the attention of those wonderful eyes, from 

 such a height, was not much bigger than one's thumb 

 nail, it leaves one wondering and marvelling. 



The Kestrel makes a delightful little pet, and has 

 been trained to catch sparrows and other small birds. 

 It will come readily to a quail behind a net, but its 

 food consists almost entirely of insects, lizards and 

 mice, and in its wild state it very seldom attacks 

 birds. That bixds pay little or no attention to one 

 hovering in their immediate vicinity is proof that 

 they do not consider it an enemy. 



It builds in cliffs, in the Himalayas, very often in 

 deep holes and lays 4 or 5 eggs " brick to Islood red, 

 mottled and blotched with a deeper colour, and mea- 

 suring about 1"57 by \'2\" (Blanford). 



{To be concluded in the next number.) 



