Page:The Natural History of Ireland vol1.djvu/80

 ting intently on them. The eggs were of large size, and as vivid in colouring as those of wild individuals. This bird had not the company of any other kestrel during its captivity. Being pur- chased in the market, its age is not known .*

Although the kestrel is the most common of the Falconidæ in Ireland, I have not met with it so abundantly anywhere in this island, as it is said by Sir William Jardine and Mr. Waterton to be in Scotland and England. The former author observes : — " We know several glens where, within a quarter of a mile, there may in April and May be found from ten to twelve eyries ; and, in one situation, eight or nine can be perceived at once."t Mr. Waterton remarks: — "Last summer [1835] I visited twenty- four nests in my park, all with the wind-hover's eggs in them."J

In an extent of glen such as that noticed, we should not, in the north of Ireland, find more than one or two nests. The reason of the species being less numerous in this island than in Great Britain, may perhaps in some degree be accounted for, by the circumstance, that there are comparatively few of the smaller Mammalia on which the kestrel chiefly preys. Of the Arvicolæ, or short-tailed mice, for instance, of which four species are found in Great Britain, none have yet been detected in Ireland ; and of the Sorices, or shrew-mice, we have as yet in Ireland met with but two, (or one-half of the British species,) one only of which is common.

Willoughby says of the kestrel : — "In the stomach we found beetles and fur of mice;" Mr. Waterton also writes to the same effect, adding that it lives " almost entirely on mice." Mr. Hep- burn, an attentive observer and a contributor of much interesting matter to Macgillivray's History of British Birds, remarks, that " birds constitute no part of its food," vol. iii. p. 335. These gentlemen are doubtless correct with regard to the food of the kestrel, in the districts from which they have written ; — but their

Mr. Robert Warren, junr.

f Brit. Birds, vol. i. p. 140.

% Essays Nat. Hist. vol. i. p. 261.