72 PHEASANTS FOB COVEBTS AND AVIARIES. 



Lord Lilford, writing in "Dresser's Birds of Europe," 

 says : " I look upon the waterhen as an enemy to tte game- 

 preserver, not only from the quantity of pheasant food which 

 it devours, but from the fact that it will attack, kill, and eat 

 young birds of all sorts. The bird is a great favourite of 

 mine, and I should be sorry to encourage its destruction, but 

 I am persuaded that it is a dangerous neighbour to young 

 game birds " ; and in his " Birds of Northamptonshire," he 

 adds, ''We cannot acquit them of the charge of a very 

 pugnacious and destructive tendency amongst their own and 

 other species of birds, and they are most certainly bad neigh- 

 bours for young pheasants and partridges, as they not only 

 consume a good deal of the food intended for game birds, 

 but will now and then capture and devour the birds them- 

 selves." 



The common kestrel, or windhover, so well-known as a 

 destroyer of field mice and rats, 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 two well authenticated as a fact for even 

 their warmest advocates to gainsay.' For many years I have 

 endeavoured to collect reliable information 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 Baston, in 

 Norfolk ; and a gamekeeper in this parish, who is as trust- 

 worthy an observer of such matters as any man I know. 



