immunity from man, for it barricades it with thorns, domes it over, and very skilfully conceals the entrance. Moreover, it has the sagacity to build, as a rule, in tall hawthorns, than which no tree offers more difficulties to even the hardiest and most weasel-bodied bird’s-nester. Failing trees, as happened in a certain barrens pot in the north of Scotland, magpies will build in a gooseberry-bush, but finding this position exceptionally exposed to enemies, they not only built their nest of the usual strength, but fortified the bush itself with a chevaux-de-frise of dead gooseberry-twigs, a foot in thickness, and impenetrable even by a mouse. To this stronghold they returned year after year; but the cottagers, who gave the birds protection for the sake of their society, were compelled to confess that the only return the pies made for their clemency was to try to rob the hens and kill the chickens.
Jays in many ways resemble magpies, being quite as cunning and just as destructive; and even those who are most averse to the persecution of any wild creature are compelled to warn the jay off their premises if they wish their game to thrive, or the song-birds in their shrubberies to live in security. For this beautiful but unprincipled bird is a most diligent and successful bird’s-nester; and, in spite of its conspicuous plumage, so stealthy in its mischief, that a pair will “work” a shrubbery thoroughly without betraying themselves even to the gardeners. Even if the clamour of the small birds attracts you to the spot, you will see nothing to explain their alarm, and the cat that you afterwards come upon watching for a mouse under the bushes is saddled with the blame which ought really to be fastened upon the pretty wretches that are watching you from the foliage overhead. The magpie and jay are, I confess, two birds that I like to see—on other people’s grounds. On my own I should prefer them stuffed, and right handsomely do they lend themselves to the artistic taxidermist. In combination and contrast no two birds are more beautiful, and as an ornament for a hall or billiard-room are not to be surpassed. For to the maximum of admiration there goes only the minimum of compunction.
But this is not the case with another of the brutal gamekeeper’s victims, that exquisite little falcon, the kestrel. All day long it is busy at the good work which the owl takes up at nightfall, for it lives almost entirely upon mice, and, these failing, upon large insects, especially the destructive cockchafer. It so very rarely molests a bird that, hawk though it is, you never see the smaller feathered-folk in alarm at its approach. “He is no enemy of theirs, and mingles freely with them, almost unheeded.” Observe what consternation the sparrow-hawk brings to the little songsters when he is abroad; but how different when the kestrel passes overhead! The chaffinch, instead of uttering cries of alarm, continues his merry notes; and the larks and pipits pay no attention to the little bird of prey. When it hovers over the farmyard, or hunts round the ricks, no anxious hen clucks to her scattered family any note of warning or recall, the sparrows continue at their meal, and the swallows, unconcerned and trustful, wheel twittering in the air. Its nest is sometimes found in holes in buildings where doves and starlings are its companions. But for mice of all kinds the kestrel has only unrelenting and ceaseless hostility; and it has been calculated that a single pair will account in a season for the astonishing number of ten thousand.
Its favourite method of hunting makes the kestrel a familiar bird by sight, and gives it its name of “windhover,” for,