owing to its numbers being increased in autumn by an
immigration, whicli is chiefly noticeable on the east coast,
from abroad ; those so arriving being mostly birds of the
year. I t has long been known to breed in England. Wil-
lugliby, who was the first to give this species an English
name, describes two young Honey-Buzzards which he saw
in a nest that had formerly been a Kite’s. They were
covered with white down, through which the dark feathers
were appearing, and had been fed with wasp-grubs, lizards
and frogs. Pennant in 1766 figured a supposed hen bird
which was shot from her nest containing two eggs, and all
English naturalists are familiar with the account given by
Gilbert White of the nest in a tall slender beech in Sel-
borne Hanger, to which, in 1780, a bold boy climbed and
brought down the single egg it contained. In 1794 Dr.
Heysham mentioned that it had bred in Cumberland. For
some time however it was usually thought that there was
no more recent instance of the Honey-Buzzard breeding in
this country, though the British Museum contained a specimen
from Cornwall with its primaries not fully grown, and
Mr. Gould in 1837 was aware that the species bred annually
at Burnham Beeches (Mag. Nat. Hist. N.S. i. p. 539),
while not long after Macgillivray recorded a nest with three
eggs taken in Aberdeenshire. In ‘ The Zoologist ’ for
1844 (p. 237) the late Mr. Wilmot gave an interesting
account of a pair of birds, shot in Wellgrove Wood near
Henley-on-Thames, in 1838, which had a nest with two
eggs, one of which is now in the Wolley Collection, while
the skins of the parents are in the possession of Mr. Fuller-
Maitland. Mention was in the same place made of a pair
killed at Stoneleigh in Warwickshire in 1841, which also
had a nest. Since this time instances have been recorded
of the Honey-Buzzard breeding in Northumberland, Shropshire,
Staffordshire and Northamptonshire-—to say nothing
of the New Forest, where it still almost yearly breeds
or attempts to breed, for between the desire of collectors
to possess specimens and of gamekeepers and idlers to
provide them, it has but little chance of accomplishing its
end. Mr. Henry John Elwes and Mr. Beaven Rake have
kindly contributed some valuable information on this subject,
but in the interest of the birds no true naturalist would
wish that the precise particulars should be at present published.
The nests are said to be generally placed in a tall
oak, between twenty-five and fifty feet from the ground, and
are built externally of dead sticks, some as large as a finger,
with lichens adhering, the interior being formed of smaller
twigs and lined with wool and freshly plucked oak and
beecli-leaves.* The persecutors of this very harmless bird
are by no means content with taking its eggs : they succeed
wherever it is possible in destroying the parents as well,
and there can he little doubt, if the present state of things
is allowed to go on, that the species will be soon extirpated
in this locality. Three seems to be the full number of eggs
laid by the Honey-Buzzard. They have a buffy-wliite
ground which is usually more or less entirely obscured by
large blotches of dark brownish-crimson or orange-brown,
in most specimens distributed pretty equally over the shell,
but occasionally collected in a broad zone round the middle,
or forming a cap at either of the ends. A variety which is
not so very uncommon much resembles some eggs of the
Peregrine Falcon. They measure from 2-06 to 1-91 by
1-73 to 1-49 in.
In Scotland a second nest has been of late years taken
in xiberdeenshire as stated on the authority of Mr. AY. C.
Angus, and according to Mr. Robert Gray a very considerable
number of birds have been killed at various places and times,
but most frequently in the east, and two examples, curiously
enough, in winter. In Ireland the occurrence of this species
is much rarer, but several instances are on record.
According to the best information available the following
is an outline of the Honey-Buzzard’s geographical distribu-
* The Editor has been informed by Mr. Newcome, who has himself observed
the fact, th a t in France th e Honey-Buzzard, when it has young, surrounds the
nest with a bower of leafy boughs—whether to serve as a screen or a b arrier he
does not know, and while the bird is so persecuted we in England shall not
easily ascertain. The young remain long in the nest and th e boughs as they
wither are frequently renewed.