towards the
south, and the spectator may be dazzled by the sun, and be unable to
distinguish the hawk from the heron. On the other hand, when the wind is
southerly the heron flies towards the north, and it and the pursuing
hawk are clearly seen by the sportsman, who then has his back to the
sun, and without difficulty knows the hawk from the hernsew."

[246] "Notes to Hamlet," Clark and Wright, 1876, p. 159.

[247] Ray's "Proverbs," 1768, p. 196.

[248] Quoted in "Notes to Hamlet," by Clark and Wright, p. 159;
see Nares's "Glossary," vol. i. p. 416.

_Jay._ From its gay and gaudy plumage this bird has been used for a
loose woman, as "Merry Wives of Windsor" (iii. 3): "we'll teach him to
know turtles from jays," _i. e._, to distinguish honest women from loose
ones. Again, in "Cymbeline" (iii. 4), Imogen says:

"Some jay of Italy,
Whose mother was her painting,[249] hath betray'd him."

[249] That is, made by art: the creature not of nature, but of
painting; cf. "Taming of the Shrew," iv. 3; "The Tempest," ii. 2.

_Kestrel._ A hawk of a base, unserviceable breed,[250] and therefore
used by Spenser, in his "Fairy Queen" (II. iii. 4), to signify base:

"Ne thought of honour ever did assay
His baser breast, but in his kestrell kynd
A pleasant veine of glory he did fynd."

[250] Nares's "Glossary," vol. ii. p. 482.

By some[251] it is derived from "coystril," a knave or peasant, from
being the hawk formerly used by persons of inferior rank. Thus, in
"Twelfth Night" (i. 3), we find "coystrill," and in "Pericles" (iv. 6)
"coystrel." The name kestrel, says Singer,[252] for an inferior kind of
hawk, was evidently a corruption of the French _quercelle_ or
_quercerelle_, and originally had no connection with coystril, though in
later times they may have been confounded. Holinshed[253] classes
coisterels with lackeys and women, the unwarlike attendants on an army.
The term was also given as a nickname to the emissaries employed by the
kings of England in their French wars. Dyce[254] also considers kestrel
distinct from coistrel.

[251] Harting's "Ornithology of Shakespeare," p. 74.

[252] "Notes," vol. iii. pp. 357, 358.

[253] "Description of England," vol. i. p. 162.

[254] "Glossary to Shakespeare," p. 88.

_Kingfisher._ It was a common belief in days gone by that during the
days the halcyon or kingfisher was engaged in h