EGGS OF BRITISH BIRDS. 13 



colour, faintly streaked, in true Bunting style, with wavy pale 

 lilac markings ; and in others these are evenly distributed almost 

 over the entire surface, mixed with scratches and streaks of 

 colour, and sometimes massed thickly together on one end of the 

 egg. They vary in length from 24 to 21 inches, and are seldom 

 less than If inch in breadth, the short eggs being the roundest 

 and bluntest. 



THE BLACK KITE. 



(Milvus ater.)* 



Plate 3, Fig. 6. 



This species has only once been captured in Great Britain, and 

 is included in the British list solely on the authenticity of a single 

 example caught in a trap in the Bed Deer Park at Alnwick in 

 May, 1866. It breeds in suitable localities throughout Europe 

 south of the Baltic, and eastwards in Asia Minor, Palestine, 

 Persia, and Turkestan. Its winter home extends to Southern 

 Africa. 



A nest found by me in Northern Germany was built about 

 45 feet from the ground, in the fork of one of the main branches 

 of a beech. It was rather shallow, about three feet by two-and- 

 a-half, outside measurement. It was built of sticks and lined 

 with dead moss and a scrap or two of paper. Like that of the 

 Common Kite, the nest of the present species is decorated with 

 rags and other rubbish. 



The eggs vary from two to five in number. They closely 

 resemble those of the Common Kite, but are, on an average, 

 perhaps more richly marked. The ground-colour is either dull 

 white, or the faintest of pale blue, more or less boldly spotted 

 and blotched with browns of different shades. Some specimens 

 are far more richly marked than others. A very handsome 

 variety has the smaller end clouded with pale brown, here and 

 there marked with pale brown and faint shell-markings of lilac. 

 Another and rarer variety is streaked in the smaller half with 

 pale brown, similar to a Bunting's egg, the streaks becoming 

 confluent at the small end of the egg. Many Black Kites' eggs 



* Milvus migrans— Saunders, Manual, p. 327 (1889) ; Sharpe, Handb. Brit. B , II., 



p. 171 (1895). 



