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Presently two flew up and hovered together, like kestrels, over the stream. One suddenly plunged, came up with a fish, and flying to the other, which was still hovering, put the fish into its beak. After this pretty gift and acceptance both flew to the willows, where, let us hope, they shared their breakfast.
For several years a pair of kestrels had lived in the valley, and had reared their young in a nest built on a ledge of rock above the Cerdyn brook and safe beyond the reach of marauding schoolboys.
Hilary was still thinking this when he climbed to the deck of the cutter and saluted his officer with the customary "Come on board." Lieutenant Lipscombe was so dissatisfied with the result of Hilary's expedition that he landed himself the next day with a party of the Kestrels and went over and searched the old hall.
Such as these they flaunt not, but wear for choiceness. You would not see them unless you knew them there. For denizens they have the hare, the fox, and the badger. Redwings, wheatears, peewits, and airy kestrels are the people of their skies. I love above all the solitude they keep, and to feel the pulsing of the untenanted air.
At almost any hour of the day, five or six kestrels might be seen quartering the fields or hovering here and there among the burrows. And, long before dark, the stoats and the weasels, as if knowing that, fulfilling a special mission, they were now safe from their arch-enemy, the keeper, hunted their prey through the "trash" of the hedge-banks, or in and out of the passages underground.
Here and in the shadows, birds of prey soared and whirled, flying away from nests perched on tips of rock. There were sparrow hawks with white bellies, and screeching kestrels. With all the speed their stiltlike legs could muster, fine fat bustards scampered over the slopes.
What I think pleased Susan most of all was a swallow's nest under the eaves, with the mother swallow sitting upon a brood of dear little swallows, and the father swallow flying around chippering like anything. "Just think of it!" said the dear child; "it is like living in a feudal castle, and having kestrels building their nests on the battlements."
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