Kestrel's Diet
The keeper met us at the door of his cottage, and we walked across the moor with him for our promised look round. A few grouse rose and sailed away out of sight. A kestrel hovered and planed about the little hills. " Them things is a curse," said the keeper. " Them and the buzzards ! I have a job to show twenty brace of birds here at the end of a day because them things take the chicks." I was surprised at his vehemence, for the kestrel seems to take more mice than anything else, although once, in a clump of trees where a family was being raised, I found several thrushes and a starling that the parents had killed and dropped. The- young mewed like kittens in the treetops, but were too cautious to come down for the plump birds that had fallen.
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