THE LITTLE KESTREL. 61 



is likewise so at Seville, and all the cities in the south of Spain, and as 

 far north as Toledo. He adds, that " a very moderate flight, to a 

 bird accustomed as this is to remain the whole day on the wing, would 

 waft it from the western coast of the Peninsula to the nearest part of 

 Ireland ;" and calls my attention to the subject, in consequence of my 

 having, in a paper published a short time before, alluded to kestrels, 

 as breeding in the towers of churches, — favourite haunts of F. tinnun- 

 culoides in Spain. In Ireland, however, this species has not yet been 

 met with ; and should it ever appear, a " flying visit " is the most 

 that can be expected from it. 



In the Morea, I have with great pleasure watched the elegant and 

 playful evolutions of this interesting miniature of the kestrel. On the 

 28th of April, 1841, during my first delightful walk there, along the 

 eastern side of the bay of Navarino, so grand in scenery and admirably 

 rich in varied vegetable forms, this bird was met with. On visiting 

 the island of Sphacteria (the scene of Byron's " Corsair"), the next 

 day, eight of them appeared for a long time in company upon the wing, 

 about a lofty cliff rising precipitously from the sea, and on the ledges 

 of which they occasionally alighted, probably having eyries there. 

 When riding in the neighbourhood of Smyrna, a month afterwards, I 

 again saw this species, as 1 did in the month of June about the Acro- 

 pobs at Athens, and above the ruins of the castle at Patras. At the 

 last place, a party of six was for some time observed going through 

 their graceful evolutions.* At Malta, I remarked, — but at too great 

 a distance for the species to be determined, — either this bird or the 

 kestrel ; which the F. tinnunculoides does not wholly replace in the 

 south of Europe, as both may occasionally be found in the same loca- 

 hties. Every place, too, in which the latter was observed by me, 

 would have equally suited its more northern congener. We occasion- 

 ally saw both species at one view, as, in a similar case, we did the 

 Common and the Alpine Swift (Cypselus opus and C. melba). The 

 two kinds of Kestrel were thus seen on the precipitous western side of 



* As many kestrels will sometimes be seen disporting together about the fine 

 cliffs at the Cavehill, near Belfast. Baron Von Waltershausen — a gentleman dis- 

 tinguished for his most elaborate scientific investigations at Mount Etna — when at 

 the former locality with me, at the beginning of August, 1845, remarked, on seeing 

 from M 'Art's Fort, a kestrel hovering below, that he had once found a bird of this 

 species lying dead, though without the appearance of having sustained any injury, 

 within the crater of Mount Etna. May not the sulphureous fumes have caused its 

 death ? The F. tinnunculoides was obtained there, by ordinary means, on the same 

 day. 



