Page:The Natural History of Ireland vol1.djvu/85

 is likewise so at Seville, and all the cities in the south of Spain, and as far north as Toledo. He adds, that "a very moderate flight, to a bird accustomed as this is to remain the whole day on the wing, would waft it from the western coast of the Peninsula to the nearest part of Ireland;" and calls my attention to the subject, in consequence of my having, in a paper published a short time before, alluded to kestrels, as breeding in the towers of churches, — favourite haunts of F. tinnunculoides in Spain. In Ireland, however, this species has not yet been met with ; and should it ever appear, a "flying visit " is the most that can be expected from it.

In the Morea, I have with great pleasure watched the elegant and playful evolutions of this interesting miniature of the kestrel. On the 28th of April, 1841, during my first delightful walk there, along the eastern side of the bay of Navarino, so grand in scenery and admirably rich in varied vegetable forms, this bird was met with. On visiting the island of Sphacteria (the scene of Byron's "Corsair"), the next day, eight of them appeared for a long time in company upon the wing, about a lofty cliff rising precipitously from the sea, and on the ledges of which they occasionally alighted, probably having eyries there. When riding in the neighbourhood of Smyrna, a month afterwards, I again saw this species, as I did in the month of June about the Acro- pobs at Athens, and above the ruins of the castle at Patras. At the last place, a party of six was for some time observed going through their graceful evolutions.* At Malta, I remarked, — but at too great a distance for the species to be determined, — either this bird or the kestrel ; which the F. tinnunculoides does not wholly replace in the south of Europe, as both may occasionally be found in the same loca- hties. Every place, too, in which the latter was observed by me, would have equally suited its more northern congener. We occasion- ally saw both species at one view, as, in a similar case, we did the Common and the Alpine Swift (Cypselus apus and C. melba). The two kinds of Kestrel were thus seen on the precipitous western side of

As many kestrels will sometimes be seen disporting together about the fine cliffs at the Cavehill, near Belfast. Baron Von Waltershausen — a gentleman dis- tinguished for his most elaborate scientific investigations at Mount Etna — when at the former locality with me, at the beginning of August, 1845, remarked, on seeing from M 'Art's Fort, a kestrel hovering below, that he had once found a bird of this species lying dead, though without the appearance of having sustained any injury, within the crater of Mount Etna. May not the sulphureous fumes have caused its death ? The F. tinnunculoides was obtained there, by ordinary means, on the same day.