THK KESTRET.S. 
2 0i.j 
umberland. I can also add a record from near London, for a 
few years ago a beautiful female bird was brought to me at the 
British Museum in the flesh. It had been shot near Nunhead 
on the previous day, having flown into a tree near some pigeon- 
shooting grounds. I did not know at the time that any par- 
ticular interest attached to the records of the Red-footed Kes- 
trel in the South of England, and omitted to take dov/ji full 
particulars. 
Three specimens have been shot in Scotland, and one was 
procured in Co, Wicklow in Ireland in 1832, 
Range outside the British Islands. — The Red-footed Kestrel is a 
bird of Eastern Europe and Western Siberia, being found over 
the greater part of Russia, and as far ea.st as Krasnoyarsk. It 
breeds also in Hungary, and has occurred as far north as 65° 
in Finland, as well as in the south of Sweden. Professor Men/.- 
hier thinks that an extension of its range to the northern pro- 
vinces of Russia has taken place within the last fifty years, and 
in places in the south of Russia, such as the steppes of Oren- 
burg, where the Red-footed Kestrel used to breed freely, it 
has been ousted to a great extent by an influx of Lesser Kes- 
trels of late years. The winter home of the present sirecies 
is in South Africa, to which it migrates in immense flocks 
along with Hobbies and Lesser Kestrels. In Eastern Siberia 
its place is taken by an allied species, with white under wing- 
coverts, called C. amurensis, which winters also in South Africa, 
but is there found chiefly on the Zambesi and in the Transvaal, 
and seems to preserve, even in its winter home, its more eastern 
habitat. 
HaMts — This little Kestrel is one of the prettiest of all the 
Falcons, and is remarkable for the difference in colour be- 
tween the sexes, which is greater than in the majority of 
Birds of Prey. The food of the Red-footed Kestrel con- 
sists almost entirely of insects, which it catches and devours 
on the wing, such as dragon-flies, beetles, moths, and grass- 
hoppers, while in company with other birds it follows the 
swarms of locusts in South Africa. In all its ways it is a Kes- 
trel, and has the same querulous cry. In its nesting, as well 
as on its migrations, it seems to be gregarious, for it is often 
found breeding in company. 
8 
p 
