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they take the young Pheasants from the coops when they have nestlings of their own ; but I do 

 not believe they are destructive to game at any other time, though I once heard of an authentic 

 case of one killing a Quail. On the 28th of November, 1843, my father dissected a Kestrel, and 

 found in it the remains of an earwig. They have been shot in the act of sucking eggs of the 

 Missel Thrush. Another bird, shot at Hampstead on the 11th of May, 1866, contained the 

 remains of a rat; but mice are their common food. Mr. Hepburn, writing in Macgillivray's 

 'British Birds,' makes a calculation that a single Kestrel will destroy 10,395 mice in 210 days; 

 but I can hardly credit it. Gunn, the Norwich birdstuffer, found frogs in the stomach of one, 

 and, asking in the ' Zoologist' if any one had met with a parallel instance, elicited the fact that 

 one had been shot at Reading in the act of grasping a slowworm. In the crop of another, shot 

 in May in the Isle of Wight, were found several spotted newts. Another, shot not very far from 

 Darlington, contained seventy-nine caterpillars, twenty-four beetles, a field-mouse, and a leech 

 two inches and a half in length. Another was killed when devouring a crab ; and in that rare 

 book, Hunt's ' British Birds,' the Kestrel is represented eating a mole. Several instances are 

 recorded in which a Kestrel ' caught a Tartar'. The bird, having descended on an object on the 

 ground, was seen to rise hurriedly, fly right up into the air, and then to drop down lifeless, when 

 a weasel ran away ; and when the observer picked up the bird he found its neck bitten out. I 

 am not aware that this singular instance of instinct at fault, which has now occurred several 

 times, is mentioned in any standard work. Many instances are recorded of Kestrels fighting, and 

 of their being shot in the act. An old and a young male are stuffed in the act of grappling one 

 another in the Dover Museum ; and under them is written, ' These two Hawks, in a furious fight, 

 clutched one another and, falling into the sea, were drowned.' " 



On the nidification of the Kestrel, Mr. Gurney adds : — 



" In June 1847, my father saw a Kestrel's nest near Norwich in the hollow of a pollard oak, 

 like an Owl's. The six nestlings and the old birds are now stuffed, in my possession. I have 

 known two instances of Kestrels laying and hatching in confinement, and have read of a third. 

 They generally nest in Crows' and Magpies' nests, and will try to dispossess the rightful tenants 

 while in possession. In Scotland, according to Macgillivray, ' twenty nests might be pointed out 

 in rocks for one in a tree.' In such places the Peregrine is an enemy who often makes a meal of 

 them. The names ' Windhover ' and ' Stannel ' (sometimes written ' Stonegall,' ' Stanchel,' and 

 ' Steingall') are of great antiquity. It is probable that they both allude to its habit of remaining 

 suspended in the air with outspread tail and open mouth." 



A curious instance of the breeding of a Kestrel in confinement has been given to us by our 

 friend Mr. Gatcombe, of Plymouth, who writes as follows : — » 



" A Mr. Rogers, who has an aviary, and deals in live birds, has had a pair of Kestrels for 

 many years, which are confined in a partition of a cage only about four feet long and four feet 

 high by two feet broad, the female of which lays every year ; and a year or two since she hatched 

 five young ones, but behaved in a most extraordinary manner with her offspring. The eggs were 

 laid every alternate day, and the young hatched accordingly; but after nursing the young one 

 most assiduously for a day, directly another came out of the shell she would kill and eat the first, 

 and so on to the fourth, when Mr. Rogers, wishing to save one bird at least, took the fifth away 

 and tried to bring it up by hand, but, to his great vexation, failed. I myself saw the female every 



