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migration. They arrive and pass in small flocks in the early part of April, when many of them 

 are shot by sportsmen, and examples are captured by sailors on board vessels cruising in the 

 Black Sea and the Sea of Marmora. Many of them are also shot, during the autumn migration, 

 in level marshy districts, which they resort to for their food, which consists of beetles, grass- 

 hoppers, and small lizards, &c. They breed in the rocky and mountainous district of Kara Hisar, 

 near Trebizond, and are never seen in the neighbourhood of the Bosphorus in summer. Young 

 birds are sometimes taken in the autumn by bird-catchers on limed twigs." 



Mr. Strickland's remarks on this bird are as follows : — 



" Very abundant in Asia Minor during the spring. It frequents the Turkish villages, and 

 builds in the roofs of the houses. Its mode of hovering is similar to that of the Common Kestrel, 

 but it is more gregarious in its habits than that bird." In the Strickland collection there is a 

 specimen killed by the owner himself at Azani, in Mysia. 



Professor von Nordmann says : — 



" I have seen several in New Russia (in the summer of 1838), in the Crimea, and at Cherson. 

 My brother has killed it near Wosnessensk, and I have also seen it in the Province of Ghouriel. 

 In the spring of 1835 I saw at Odessa several of these birds, flying here and there, and resting 

 on the tops of the high houses in the town in company with Common Kestrels. It leaves us 

 early in September, and does not return until the spring, a few days after the arrival of the Red- 

 legged Falcon." 



Herr H. Goebel says it is " rare in the Government of Kiew." Eversmann states that on his 

 journey from Orenburg to Bokhara he found it common on the northern steppes. 



The Rev. H. B. Tristram, in his paper on the Ornithology of Palestine, observes : — 



" This species returns with the Swallows in March, and at once consorts with its congener, 

 the Common Kestrel. It may be seen everywhere, in the open glades, or among the lanes 

 between the gardens in the suburbs of the villages pursuing insects, and especially catching 

 cockchafers towards evening. It breeds, so far as we have observed, invariably in communities, 

 usually in narrow fissures of the rocks or in the crevices of ruins, not generally in very inaccessible 

 situations, but always in so narrow a cleft, and at such a depth in, that the eggs are hard to 

 extract. I never found a colony without many of the Common Kestrel breeding in the same 

 place. The largest rookeries of this bird we met with were in the towns of Lyddah and Ramleh, 

 and in the top of an old quarried cave (perfectly protected by prickly fern) in the town of 

 Nazareth. Although the two species are so closely allied, there can be no difficulty in dis- 

 criminating the eggs ; and we found that the Arab boys knew the difference between the two 

 species at once, calling one the black-nailed and the other the white-nailed ' bashik.' " 



Again he writes : — 



" It is gregarious about the ruins in the plain-districts. About fifteen or twenty pairs were 

 building their nests in and about the beautiful tower of Ramleh (Arimathea) in company with a 

 still larger number of the Common Kestrel, and flew screaming round me as I climbed the still 

 perfect staircase of the tower. It was interesting to watch them in the evening sweeping bike 

 Swallows over the field, or threading their way up and down the lanes formed with prickly pear, 

 in pursuit of the Scarabcei on which they were feeding, seizing them with their claws on the 

 wing, and, as they sailed by me, picking off with their beaks the elytra of their prey, and dropping 



