222 
NATURE NOTES. 
But when one of the Departments of State, free from 
prejudice or sentiment, and with its facility for obtaining 
accurate information, publishes facts concerning the value of 
certain birds to farmer and gamekeeper, such facts ought to carry 
conviction to the mind of any sensible person. This is what 
is said of that pretty little hawk the kestrel : “ 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 conditions of climate and other circum- 
stances, and in the absence of the checks provided by nature 
against their undue increase, certain animals multiply exceed- 
ingly 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. Mice certainly form the principal part 
of the food of the kestrel. It also feeds on beetles, especially 
cockchafers and wire worms (the larvae of clock-beetles) and 
frogs.” In the report of the Committee which inquired 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. 
Even a good word is found for the sparrow-hawk, which 
certainly does eat a few young birds, but as it generally hunts 
at dusk when the chicks are under cover of the hen, it does less 
harm than is usually charged against it. On the other hand, it 
undoubtedly does good. “Mice, voles, and insects, are some- 
times taken by this hawk.” Seebohm says that it “is beneficial 
because it kills wood-pigeons, which are a fearful pest to farmers 
in some localities.” This is corroborated by evidence cited in 
the Report of the Committee of the House of Commons on the 
protection of Wild Birds, in 1873, the effect that the wood- 
pigeon is the natural food of the sparrow-hawk, which is the 
only bird that can catch it. 
Another leaflet deals with owls, and quotes overwhelming 
authorities as to their being beneficial to the agriculturist, and 
it is pleasing to know that this fact is making headway in 
country districts, and there are many farmers who recognise 
the owl as one of their best friends. 
With regard to the Tit family, the Board of Agriculture are 
equally emphatic. “ All the titmice are more or less active 
hunters of insects, for which they are constantly on the watch, 
and no inhabitants of the insect world come amiss to them as 
food. They are especially useful in the destruction of many 
crop pests, which they devour in all stages. During the winter 
“they clear off enormous quantities of eggs which have been 
deposited by insects of various kinds in dormant buds or near 
the buds, and in the clefts of the bark or rind of trees. At this 
season the titmice may be seen frequently running up and down 
the trunks, stems and branches, or hanging head downward from 
