22 



THE KESTREL OR WINDHOVER. 



[Sept. 1894. 



VIIL— THE KESTREL OR WINDHOVER 



(Fcdco Tinnunculus). 



This beautiful and valuable bird is often wantonly killed 

 either for the sake of shooting at something wild, and the pleasure 

 of seeing it stuffed and set in a glass case, or because of an 

 exaggerated idea on the part of gamekeepers that it is a 

 systematic destroyer of young partridges and pheasants, grouse, 

 hares, and rabbits. 



The wholesale destruction of such birds as the Kestrel is 

 frequently the main cause of abnormal and sudden attacks upon 

 crops by animals and insects. In favourable condition of climate 

 and other circumstances, and in the absence of the checks pro- 

 vided by nature, to their undue increase, certain animals multiply 

 exceedingly and do infinite harm, as was exemplified by the 

 serious injury occasioned to grass land in parts of Scotland by 

 voles in 1892. Insects also appear more frequently and in 

 larger numbers in these later days owing in a degree to the 

 destruction of birds, their natural destroyers. As an example, it 

 may be observed that the enormous decrease in the number of 

 swallows on account of their alleged destruction, in their winter 

 quarters, has, it is fully believed, been one reason for the swarms 

 of aphides which now come upon the hop plants regularly every 

 season. In their migration from the plum and damson trees, 

 and other trees of the 'priinus tribe, these insects were formerly 

 cleared off" by the swallows. Now swallows are so reduced in 

 numbers that they have little influence upon insect attacks. 



The Kestrel prefers animals of the mouse tribe to all other 

 forms (;f food. Yarrell, in his History of British Birds, says, 

 Mice certainly form the principal part of the food of this 

 species." It also feeds on beetle.^^, especially cock-chafers, and 

 wireworms, the larvae of click-beetles, and frogs. When it 

 cannot get mice it will occasionally take very young birds, as 

 pheasants, partridges, and grouse, but according to all observers 

 it preys chiefly upon mice and insects ; and in the report of the 

 Departmental Committee, appointed by the Board of Agriculture 

 to inquire into a plague of field voles in Scotland in 1892, it is 

 stated that the food of the Kestrel is known to consist almost 

 exclusively of mice, grasshoppers, coleopterous insects, and their 

 larvae. 



Keepers do not always discriminate between hawk and hawk, 

 and because other hawks, as the Sparrowhawk, for instance, take 

 young game birds wholesale, it is often erroneously concluded that 

 the Kestrel is equally an oflfender in this respect. In the report 

 referred to above, it is observed, in connection with the question 

 of the Kestrel's habits, that it is rare to find people able to 

 distinguish between one kind of hawk and another. Few of 



