BY K. H. BENNETT, ESQ. 147 



alter my opinion, for I subsequently found portions of Emu 

 egg shells in the nest of one of these Buzzards. The manner in 

 which they effect the abstraction of the Emu eggs — as told me by 

 the blacks — shows an amount of cunning and sagacity that one 

 would scarcely give the bird credit for, and is as follows : — " On 

 discovering a nest, the Buzzard searches about for a stone, or 

 what is much more frequently found here, a hard lump of calcined 

 earth. Armed with this the Buzzard returns (and should the 

 Emu be on the nest) alights on the ground some distance off, and 

 approaches with outstretched flapping wings, the Emu alarmed 

 at this, to it, strange looking object, hastily abandons the nest 

 and runs away, the Buzzard then takes quiet possession, and with 

 the stone breaks a hole in the side of each egg into which it 

 inserts its claw and carries them off at its leisure ; for when the 

 eggs are broken the Emu abandons the nest." So much for the 

 blacks' story ! 



This however, is in a great measure corroborated by a friend of 

 mine, who lives on the adjoining Station, and who told 

 me that in August last, he found the nest of an Emu containing 

 five eggs, and that all of them had a hole broken in the side, and 

 that the fracture had been done quite recently, and in the nest 

 also was one of these lumps of calcined earth about the size of a 

 man's fist. 



In a nest to which I recently ascended, I found amongst the 

 remains of various reptiles, the shells of a couple of Bustards' 

 eggs. In this nest were a couple of young Buzzards lately 

 hatched. 



I think after all this testimony there can be little doubt of its 

 nest-robbing proclivities, a habit which I think is peculiar to this 

 bird, and is not shared by any other member of the Accipiter 

 family so far as I know. I have often asked the blacks, if the 

 "Wedge-tailed Eagle robs nests, but they always say no. 



The nest of this bird is a rough structure, generally placed on 

 a forked horizontal branch, and is often quite as large as that of 



