MOORLAND BIRDS 



7i 



gether, half watching for the movement of small birds, on 

 which it preys, and half in mere enjoyment of life. From 

 this habit it is also called the Stone Hawk. But not every 

 hawk that is seen pefched on a rock on the moors is likely to 

 be a merlin. Buzzards have a similar habit of choosing a 

 lofty perch for the digestion of their meals ; and where 

 merlins and buzzards are both scarce, the kestrel has the 

 same picturesque habit. Merlins lay their eggs in May in a 

 bare hollow among the grass or heather. More rarely they 



choose an old crow's nest, which is a common practice of the 

 kestrel's. Buzzards and ravens both build a large nest of 

 sticks or heather stems ; young buzzards are hatched in 

 May, but the raven is an earlier nester, and its young are 

 then beginning to stray from their nest among the neigh- 

 bouring rocks. Hawks as a tribe have rather vague and 

 casual habits of nesting ; and the kestrel lays its eggs indif- 

 ferently in a hole in some rock-face, like a jackdaw or stock- 

 dove, or in an old nest in a tree — generally a crow's. In 

 some lonely ravine among the moors, there may be only two 

 trees clinging to the bare slopes for two or three miles ; a 

 bulky carrion crow's nest may fill the top of one stunted 

 rowan or pine, and where its half-ruined predecessor of last 



