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"As wild as a hawk" is a proverbial comparison, but kestrels venture into the outskirts of Brighton, and even right over the town. Not long since one was observed hovering above a field which divides part of Brighton from Hove. The bird had hardly settled himself and obtained his balance, when three or four rooks who were passing deliberately changed their course to attack him.
Moving with greater swiftness, the kestrel escaped their angry but clumsy assaults; still they drove him from the spot, and followed him eastwards over the town till out of sight now wheeling round, and now doing their utmost to rise higher and get the advantage of him. Kestrels appear rather numerous in this vicinity.
There was an attempt at flight on the part of the Kestrels, but there was no room to fly, though the general impression was that the smugglers were about to hurl down pieces of rock upon them from above, but their dread was chased away by a well-known voice exclaiming: "All right, my lads: I'm not killed." "But you've 'most killed me," growled Tom Tully. "Never mind, Tom.
Kestrels, too, come home to the wood. Pheasants crow, but not from fear from defiance; in fear they scream. The boom startles them, and they instantly defy the sky.
The honey smell of the heather, the woody smell of the bracken, the faint fragrance of wood-smoke wafted from a bonfire in the valley below they all carried with them an inexpressible magic for the man wandering on the moor. So did the movements of birds the rise of a couple of startled grouse, the hovering of two kestrels, a flight of wild duck in the distance.
This, however, so enraged the Kestrels that they beat back the attacking party, cutting down several and literally hurling others over into their boat, which hauled off, not liking its reception.
Kestrels, too, come home to the wood. Pheasants crow, but not from fear from defiance, in fear they scream. The boom startles them, and they instantly defy the sky.
He is a prosy person with a host of grievances. I took my gun as a possible means of escape from him." "Windmill Hill? I know the name. Oh! I remember: it was there my father has just been telling me that your father and he shot the pair of kestrels, when they were boys together."
“Tudhoe has no river, a misfortune ‘valde deflendus.’ In other respects the vicinity was charming; and it afforded an ample supply of woods and hedgerow trees to insure a sufficient stock of carrion crows, jackdaws, jays, magpies, brown owls, kestrels, merlins, and sparrow-hawks, for the benefit of natural history and my own instruction and amusement.”
Great was my happiness to find them still there, as well as the daws and all the other feathered people who make this great building their home; even the kestrels were not wanting. There were three there one morning, quarrelling with the daws in the old way in the old place, halfway up the soaring spire.
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