CH. VIII.] KESTREL AT TIMES DESTRUCTIVE. 249 
occasionally varied by small birds, coleopterous 
insects, their larvee, and earth-worms. Yet occa- 
sionally, and particularly where they have families 
to provide for, they are not contented with such 
“small deer,” but will make free with young phea- 
sants or partridges, sometimes even carrying their 
audacity to the extent of making a raid on the 
chicken or pheasant coop. I had one day paid 
a visit to a gamekeeper during the summer to 
see how his young birds got on, when he reported 
“all well,” except that he had been “terribly 
bothered with one of they nasty ‘vanner hawks’” 
(Vecticé for kestrels—qu. wind-fanner), which had 
carried off several of them. On my expressing 
some doubt as to whether the offender was really 
a vanner, he said he was quite sure of it, and 
hoped shortly to give me ocular demonstration 
of the fact; nor did he leave it long doubtful, 
for on my next visit a day or two afterwards he 
shewed her to me, an undoubted female kestrel, 
which he had shot in flagrante delicto, in the very 
act of carrying off one of his young pheasants. 
While on the subject of vermin I will say a 
few words on the subject of our dear friends and 
enemies the Foxes—friends to all those who, like 
myself, would sooner be with the hounds through 
