206 HANDBOOK OF BRITISH INLAND BIRDS 
during the winter. A particular effort should 
always be made to save this scarce and beautiful 
little Hawk from indiscriminate slaughter by- 
gamekeepers on the preserved estates which it 
generally frequents ; if it ever takes a young 
pheasant at all, it is on the rarest possible occasions, 
and its beauty and interest would more than com- 
pensate most sportsmen and landowners for ten 
times the destruction of game committed by all 
the Hobbies which nest in the whole of England. 
MERLIN. 
(^Falco aesalon,) 
Stone Falcon. — The Merlin is the smallest of 
British Hawks, and is distinctively a bird of the 
open moorlands. It is found during the breeding 
season on the moors and mountains of Wales and the 
north of England, while in winter it often descends 
to the lowlands, and its range is then more general. 
It preys upon numerous small birds, as well as on 
Snipe and other species of the marsh and shore, 
and is a swift and dashing flyer, though inferior in 
this respect to the Hobby of the southern wood- 
lands. It has a favourite habit of perching upon 
some jutting rock or large boulder upon the moor- 
