The Kite is about 24 inches in length. The back is rusty-red, the feathers there having dark shaft lines and edges. The tail is strongly forked. The female is less brightly coloured than the male and the young still less so. The thighs are clad with feathers, the legs bare, claws moderately strong and sharp. The bill is sickle-shaped and has a yellow cere at its base. The irides are yellowish-white. The Kite is a keen-sighted bird of prey, and builds its nest for the most part on the highest trees in the woods. It lays two or three eggs, more rarely four, with dirty blotches, smears, and spots on a greenish-white ground. [Illustration: USEFUL. THE RED-FOOTED FALCON. MALE AND FEMALE.] THE RED-FOOTED FALCON OR ORANGE-LEGGED HOBBY. (_Falco vespertinus._) Unlike all the rest of his congeners this beautiful Falcon lives exclusively on insects. It is considered by the Mohammedan races as a sacred bird, on account of the way in which it destroys grasshoppers. Its flight is easy and bold, and the way in which he circles and floats in the air is beautiful. The young ones are also fed on insects, and as soon as they are fledged the little flock betake themselves to the meadows or the seashore and there begin with zeal their work of insect hunting. They settle on the meadows, on the freshly mown rows, and destroy the grasshoppers, and when there is a plague of these insects the Falcons are untiring in their work of extermination. It is one of the most gentle of birds, and the young ones when caught become tame in the course of a day. It can easily be seen from the expression of the eyes that there is no savagery at all in its nature. How different from the glance of the Sparrow-Hawk! It is a remarkable characteristic of this bird that not only does it differ from others of its species in its food, but also in regard to its nest. As a rule, it does not build a nest, but occupies one, generally at the cost of a battle, belonging to one of a colony of rooks. The fight for the nest is a fine spectacle, for in it the bird exhibits to the full its fine art of flight. In Hungary it is a regular migrant, and arrives in fairly large numbers. * * * * * The Red-footed Falcon is only a rare wanderer to the British Islands on its migratory flight, and chiefly to England. One was recorded as shot in Scotland in 1866--another, which is in the Dublin Museum, was taken in County Wicklow in 1832. It is a pity that this useful species, living as it chiefly does on insects and field mice, should only appear in our country to be shot. On the steppes of Orenburg in Russia it has decreased during the last fifty years, owing apparently to the immigration of great numbers of the Lesser Kestrel, which used to be rare there. The flight of the Red-footed Falcon is not nearly so dashing as that of the Kestrel; you can note a difference in the expression of the eye and the shape of forehead of the two birds.