THE GREENLAND JER-FALCON (Hierofalco candicans).[207]
Besides the Peregrine, there were used in falconry, in England, the Noble, or Jer-Falcons, birds which were much prized, although they did not possess the same fire and dash in pursuit of their quarry exhibited by the former bird. There are five distinct kinds of these northern Jer-Falcons, without mentioning the Saker Falcon of South-eastern Europe, which also belongs to the genus Hierofalco. The best known is the Greenland Jer-Falcon, which, as its name implies, is an inhabitant of Greenland and North America, young birds only occurring in the British Islands during migration. This species is nearly pure white in colour when fully adult, the back and wings retaining small spots of black, the entire head and breast, and especially the tail, becoming pure white as the bird gets older and loses the spots and bars which characterise its immature dress. An unfailing mark by which a Greenland Jer-Falcon can be told at any age is the light yellowish bill and cere, and the absence of arrow-shaped bars on the flanks, which in young birds are longitudinally streaked with brown, but are never barred. All the other Jer-Falcons have distinct bars across the flanks, as well as bluish bills and regularly barred tails. They are four in number, the Norway Jer-Falcon (H. gyrfalco), the Iceland Jer-Falcon (H. islandicus), Holböll’s Jer-Falcon (H. Holbölli), and the Labrador Jer-Falcon (H. labradorus). They are nearly all peculiar to the countries whose names they bear, the Norway bird not occurring anywhere out of Europe and Northern Asia, one specimen having been known to occur in England; it seems also to emigrate to Central Asia, as a single bird was procured during the last Yarkand Mission. All the Jer-Falcons have shorter toes than the Peregrines, in which the outer toe is very long, while in the other birds the outer and inner toes are about equal in length.
When in a wild state the Greenland Falcon feeds upon Ptarmigan, Geese, and on the sea-birds which frequent the cliffs where it takes up its abode. It evinces great courage in defending its nest.
THE KESTRELS (Cerchneis).
These form a group of short-toed Hawks, like the foregoing, but are much more numerous in species, and are found distributed all over the world, with the exception of some of the Oceanic Islands. More than twenty different kinds of Kestrel are recognised by naturalists, and they are more insect-feeding birds than the bolder and nobler Falcons which have just been spoken of. The commonest and best known of all is
THE COMMON KESTREL, OR WIND-HOVER (Cerchneis tinnunculus).[208]
This species gains its name of Wind-hover from a very pretty and graceful action with which it hangs suspended in the air, as if by a thread, keeping itself balanced by a constant winnowing of the air by its wings, and from this position it scans the ground below for a stray Mouse which may venture out of its hole, for mice and small birds constitute its principal food. It is frequently to be seen in the autumn hovering about a field of sheaved corn in the twilight, selecting a position about forty feet in the air, and occasionally stooping down on some prey in the stubble below. Should it not succeed in its pounce, it flies a little way in a few easy circles, and again commences to hover over a new part of the field. Insects also form a staple article of food to the Kestrel, who devours them while in full flight, passing its leg up to its bill, and the author has met with an instance of a Kestrel hawking for insects over a stream in the late evening. This Hawk is, unfortunately, often confounded through the ignorance of gamekeepers with the Sparrow-Hawk, and suffers consequently for the misdeeds of the latter, a fact much to be regretted, for it is a very useful bird, owing to the number of mice it destroys; indeed, a writer in Macgillivray’s “British Birds” computes that a single Kestrel would destroy upwards of ten thousand mice during its stay in Britain. It will also catch birds, but in limited numbers, and then generally only during the breeding season, when its young require constant food. Although of a less ferocious nature and aspect than the Falcons, the Kestrel, nevertheless, often shows forth his accipitrine temperament in a way that would scarcely be expected from his mild-looking dark eye, which has nothing of the ferocity of the yellow iris of the Sparrow-Hawk. Some young birds belonging to the writer, consisting of three females and a male, being left without food for a few hours by the person in whose charge they were placed, forgot their fraternal affection, and the larger hen birds set upon the male, who was not so large or strong as they were, and devoured him completely. When shooting in a sandy island near Heligoland also, the writer wounded a Dunlin, which floated on the water a considerable distance out at sea, and whilst waiting for the waves to bring the bird in to land a Kestrel hove in sight and made a swoop at the Dunlin, which the latter avoided by a rapid dive. Twenty-three times the Hawk repeated the manœuvre without success, until the poor little wader became exhausted, and was borne in the talons of his relentless foe towards the rock of Heligoland, about a mile off. This action had been witnessed also by Messrs Seebohm and Nicholson, from other parts of the same sandy island, and the latter kept pace with the Kestrel as it skirted the beach, in the hopes that it might cross the island when a shot would perhaps have caused the bird to drop his exhausted quarry. The Hawk, however, kept well out at sea, and regained his rocky home, though he was several times seen to pause in his flight and take a tighter grasp of his victim.
COMMON KESTREL.