REARING AND PROTECTION. 47 
of other food, but have never known a raid of this description. I attribute it to 
the excessive drought, which has so starved the birds by depriving them of their 
natural insect food that they are driven to depredation. It will be necessary to be , 
on guard for some time; bad habits once acquired (as with man-eating tigers) may 
last even more than one season. Probably the half-dozen rooks first seen amongst 
the coops tasted two or three, and, finding them eatable, brought their friends in 
numbers the next morning.” 
The common Moorhen, or Gallinule, is occasionally destructive to young pheasants. 
The late Mr. Gould recounted the evidence in the fourth volume of “The Birds 
of Great Britain,’ and Mr. H. J. Partridge, of Hockham Hall, Thetford, writing to 
the Zoologist, stated that “ At the beginning of July, the keeper having lost several 
pheasants about three weeks old from a copse, and having set traps in vain for 
winged and four-footed vermin, determined to keep watch for the aggressor, when, 
after some time, a Moorhen was seen walking about near the copse; the keeper, 
supposing it only came to eat the young pheasants’ food, did not shoot it, until he 
saw the Moorhen strike a young pheasant, which it killed immediately, and devoured, 
except the leg and wing bones. The remains agreed exactly with eight found 
before. Perfect confidence may be placed in the correctness of this statement.’ 
The common Kestrel, or Windhover, so well known as a destroyer of field 
mice, has also been accused of attacking young pheasants. Mr. J. H. Gurney, of 
Northrepps, one of the highest authorities on accipitrine birds, writes as follows :— 
“* Mr. Stevenson, in his article on the Kestrel in the ‘ Birds of Norfolk,’ remarks: 
‘That some kestrels carry off young partridges as well as other small birds during 
the nesting season, is too well authenticated as a fact for even their warmest adyo- 
eates to gainsay.’ For many years I have endeavoured to collect reliable infor- 
mation on this point, and I am convinced of the correctness of Mr. Stevenson’s 
opinion above quoted; but there is this difference between the sparrowhawk and 
the kestrel in their habits of preying on young partridges and pheasants—viz., that 
the kestrel only destroys them when very young, and the sparrowhawk continues 
to attack them long after they have grown too large to be prey for the kestrel. To 
particularise two instances: Many years ago, a very young partridge was brought to 
me which had been taken out of a kestrel’s nest at Easton, in Norfolk; and during 
the present spring a gamekeeper in this parish, who is as trustworthy an observer 
of such matters as any man I know, saw a hen kestrel take up a very young 
pheasant in its talons and rise with it about eight feet from the ground; my 
informant then fired at the depredator with a small pistol, when it dropped its prey, 
which, though somewhat injured, ultimately recovered; and an instance of a young 
pheasant found in the nest of a kestrel was recorded in The Field of May 
18, 1868.” 
The pheasant, from nesting on the ground, is peculiarly exposed to the 
