FALCONID®. Ba 
that in confinement it will, when satisfied, hide the 
rest of its food. He also notices another very extra- 
ordinary peculiarity of the female Common Buzzard 
in confinement, namely, that she has been known to 
sit on hen’s eggs and bring up a good brood of 
chickens,* but that upon one occasion, when given 
the young chickens ready hatched to bring up, in- 
stead of the eggs to sit upon first, she ate them all. 
The nest is either placed on some ledge of a steep 
cliff or rock, when it is made of twigs, heath, wool, 
and some other substances; or in the forked branches 
of some large tree, in which case the bird is apt to 
choose the forsaken nest of some other bird, which 
it repairs with the same materials as those already 
mentioned.t 
The Buzzard varies much in plumage; I shall, 
however, describe that which appears to me the most 
usual :—Bill bluish horn; cere yellow; irides gene- 
rally yellow; general colouring of the head and all 
the upper parts dark dull brown, most of the feathers 
bordered with yellowish white ; throat, centre of each 
feather brown, more or less edged with white ; breast 
brown; belly white, barred with brown; under tail- | 
coverts white, with a few brown spots; primary quills 
dusky above; on the under parts the tips and outer 
* For another well-authenticated instance of this, see 
the ‘ Zoologist’ for 1865, p. 9686. 
+ Yarrell, vol. 1., p. 90, 
