FALCO YESPERTINUS, Linn. 



(Red-legged Falcon.) 



The Red-legged Falcon paid the Brighton downs a visit on May 20, 1873, 

 when an adult male arrived, of which I sent an account to the ' Field,' 

 May 24. I received two sorts of beetles on w^hich it had been feeding. This 

 bird two days after death became very high, as is usually the case with 

 those which live on beetles and some other insects. This pretty little 

 Falcon breeds in flocks. 



ACCIPITER NISUS, Linn. 



(Sparrow-Hawk.) 



This bird is named Nisus after a king of Megara, who was slain through the 

 treachery of his own daughter. Ovid states he was changed into an Eagle (J^ 

 while his daughter became some other, a small species not known. The 

 author of the ' Synopsis of the Newcastle Museum,' Mr. Geo. Townshend Fox 

 (1827, Newcastle), says Linnseus did not give the name, "as the Sparrow- 

 Hawk had been called Nisus by earlier w'riters (see Ray, Willughby, Frisch, 

 &c.)." 



In ancient times it was common to pay " a sore hawk," as a fine, at the 

 termination of a fictitious suit. In ' Shakespeare's England,' by G. W. 

 Thornbury, p. 379, we find " From August to November hawks were called 

 sore hawks, and were in their prime for beauty and use ; their first feathers 

 were moulted at the end of the first year. From January to April the 

 Italians said that hawks were peculiarly subject to disease." Of a sore 

 Sparrow-Hawk thus used, an instance is recorded by the Rev. R. W. Eyton 

 in his 'Antiquities of Shropshire,' vol. i. p. 376 : — 



