78 BRITISH BIRDS. 
Scotland, where a few nests are still to be met with in the most secluded 
glens, the pine-woods appear to be its favourite nesting-place. The Scotch 
fir is the tree almost invariably selected. According to Mr. Booth, whose 
experience with these birds in Scotland of late years makes his observa- 
tions upon them the more especially interesting, the nest varies con- 
siderably in its position. Sometimes it is at the summit of a slender 
bending pine, sometimes amongst the broadly spreading branches of a 
gigantic fir—and at times at a height of but fifteen or eighteen feet from 
the ground, and placed close to the trunk where several large limbs 
branch out. In such a situation as this its bulky nest is often scarcely 
visible from below. It is made principally of dry sticks and twigs, the 
dead branches of pines, and lined with withered grass, moss, sheep’s wool, 
old rags, scraps of paper, or, in fact, any old rubbish that is conveniently 
accessible. ew rapacious birds show such a partiality for collecting 
rubbish for their nests as the Kite; in fact it far excels the Jackdaw 
or the House-Sparrow in this respect, or even a tame Raven or Magpie. 
The nest is sometimes a very bulky structure, and is flat, similar to that of 
the Sparrow-Hawk. 
I found the Kite by no means uncommon in the forests both of Bruns- 
wick and Pomerania, where it is a summer visiter, arriving tewards the 
end of February or early in March, and leaving again for the south about 
the middle of September. Dr. Holland informed me that they are gre- 
garious during migration ; and on the 11th of last March I saw a flock of 
migratory birds, consisting of eight Kites, a Crane, and a Peregrine 
Falcon, crossing the Pyrenees near St. Sebastian. My kind friends 
Dr. and Prof. Blasius and Oberamtmann Nehrkorn undertook to show me 
plerity of Kites’ nests in the Brunswick forests; and very successful they 
were. We took the first nest on the 4th of May, in a beech tree, about 
ninety feet from the ground. Both birds were flying over the forest all 
the time. The nest contained two highly incubated eggs, and was about 
twenty inches across and nearly as high. It was lined with all sorts of 
rubbish—old rags, part of a newspaper, a piece of embroidery, part of an 
old stocking, some moss, and goat’s hair. The second nest we took on 
the 12th of May. It was on a comparatively slender side branch of an 
oak, about eighty feet from the ground, very long, about two feet by one 
foot wide. Weknocked loudly on the tree; but the only result was that a 
Kite appeared and began to fly around; so we concluded that she had 
accidentally been absent when we arrived. Before, however, our climber 
had got more than a fourth of the way up to the nest she flew off, and 
both birds continued to fly to and fro over the tree. The nest contained 
three young Kites and the foot of a hare. It was lined with sheep’s wool, 
some rags, blue worsted, and some paper. 
We took the next nest on the 17th of May, in an oak tree, about forty- 
