observed in the Vicinity of Wei Hai Wei. 67 9 
Some nests were observed which appeared to have been 
built by the birds themselves, perhaps on a foundation laid 
by a Magpie: they were made of rather small sticks, and 
lined with grass. 
This species, as Abbe David has pointed out, is very tame 
and confiding, and frequently breeds close to villages or even 
inside the walls of a city. Several nests are sometimes 
discovered in close proximity. 
This species may breed when quite immature, and a pair, 
in plumage which indicated their youth, was obtained from 
a nest containing eggs on June 26th. It is a late breeder, 
and, as a rule, eggs are not laid until the last week of June, 
or the first week of July. 
Four is the most usual number of eggs in a clutch, three 
is not uncommon, but five is rare. These eggs are of 
two types, one brownish or sepia-coloured and the other 
reddish. Most specimens are marked thickly with reddish 
spots on a yellowish-wliite ground, and a few are richly and 
heavily blotched with large cloudy markings. Some eggs are 
quite light in colour, being faintly marked with small brown 
spots on a yellowish ground, whilst others, again, are entirely 
yellowish-white, with scanty and scattered spots of sepia- 
colour. 
Forty eggs from Shantung average 1*41 x 1T4, and vary 
in length from 1*47 to 1*31 and in width from 1*19 to 108. 
Falco tinnunculus. 
The Kestrel is fairly common as a resident in and about 
Wei Hai Wei, each pair of birds appropriating some range 
of cliffs or a bold headland to themselves. The numbers 
of this species, like those of so many others, are vastly 
augmented in August and September by the arrival of 
numerous migrants from further north. 
So far as is known, this species, unlike the nearly allied 
Falco amurensis , never nests in a tree at Wei Hai Wei ; 
but invariably in some cleft of the cliffs or rocks by the 
sea-shore. 
2 z 2 
