RBAEING AND PROTECTION. 47 



of other food, hut have never known a raid of this description. I attribute it to 

 the excessive drought, which has so starved the birds by depriving them of their 

 natural insect food that they are driven to depredation. It will be necessary to be 

 on guard for some time; bad habits once acquired (as with man-eating tigers) may 

 last even more than one season. Probably the half-dozen rooks first seen amongst 

 the coops tasted two or three, and, finding them eatable, brought their friends in 

 numbers the next morning." 



The common Moorhen, or GaUinule, is occasionally destructive to young pheasants. 

 The late Mr. Gould recounted the evidence in the fourth volume of " The Birds 

 of Great Britain," and Mr. H. J. Partridge, of Hockham HaU, Thetford, writing to 

 the Zoologist, stated that " At the beginning of July, the keeper having lost several 

 pheasants about three weeks old from a copse, and having set traps in vain for 

 winged and four-footed vermin, determined to keep watch for the aggressor, when, 

 after some time, a Moorhen was seen walking about near the copse; the keeper, 

 supposing it only came to eat the young pheasants' food, did not shoot it, Tintil he 

 saw the Moorhen strike a young pheasant, which it kUled immediately, and devoured, 

 except the leg and wing bones. The remains agreed exactly with eight found 

 before. Perfect confidence may be placed in the correctness of this statement." 



The common Kestrel, or Windhover, so well known as a destroyer of field 

 mice, has also been accused of attacking young pheasants. Mr. J. H. Gurney,. of 

 Northrepps, one of the highest authorities on accipitrine birds, writes as foUows : — 

 " 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 too well authenticated as a fact for even their warmest advo- 

 cates to gainsay.' Por many years I have endeavoured to collect reliable infor- 

 mation 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 Easton, in. Norfolk; and during 

 the present spring a gamekeeper in this parish, who is as trustworthy an observer 

 of such matters as any man I know, saw a hen kestrel take up a very young 

 pheasant in its talons and rise with it about eight feet from the ground; my 

 informant then flj?ed at the depredator with a small pistol, when it dropped its prey, 

 which, though somewhat injured, ultimately recovered ; and an instance of a young 

 pheasant found in the nest of a kestrel was recorded in The Field of May 

 13, 1868." 



The pheasant, from nesting on the ground, is peculiarly exposed to the 



