COMMON KITE. 79 
five feet from the ground. When we were about twenty-five yards from 
the nest the bird flew slowly off and wheeled round towards us. The nest 
was lined with rags, the remains of a worsted stocking, part of a news- 
paper (the ‘Gartenlaube’), lumps of hair from a cushion, and brown 
paper. It contained two young Kites, the remains of a rabbit, and a 
hamster rat (Cricetus vulgaris). On the same day we shot a Kite from 
its nest in an oak about eighty feet from the ground, took another 
Kite’s nest from an oak only forty feet from the ground, containing only 
one young bird, and took a fourth nest from an oak about thirty- 
five feet from the ground, containing two young birds. In neither of 
these two last nests was there any food; but both were lined with wool, 
rags, pig’s hair, and bits of newspaper. 
In Pomerania I only inspected one Kite’s nest, which was at least 
two miles from any house ; nevertheless it was lined with rags and paper. 
It is not known that the male assists in the task of incubation ; but he feeds 
the female on the nest. 
Sometimes the Kite will pick up a fish from the surface of the water in 
the same way that his near relation in the south does. At Riddagshausen 
I watched a Kite beating up and down over the lake, and once I saw it 
stoop down to the surface of the water and apparently pick something up 
in its claws, probably a fish, with which it flew away to a tree. 
The eggs of the Kite are generally three, sometimes only two in number, 
and most closely resemble those of the Buzzards, but are, as a rule, dis- 
tinguished from them by their more scratchy and streaky appearance. 
When newly laid they are the palest bluish green in ground-colour, which 
soon fades to white or nearly so, sparingly spotted and blotched with dark 
reddish brown, with a few shell-markings, ill-defined and pale purplish 
grey. Some specimens are far more heavily marked than others, being 
clouded and dashed with colour, similar to Rough-legged Buzzards’ eggs ; 
others are dirty bluish white in ground-colour, faintly streaked, in true 
Bunting style, with wavy pale lilac markings ; and in others the markings 
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 2°4 to 2:1 inch, and are seldom less 
than 13 inch in breadth, the short eggs being the roundest and bluntest. 
Fresh eggs may be obtained from the beginning to the end of April. 
The general colour of the upper parts of the Kite is reddish brown, each 
feather with pale edges, those of the head and neck much elongated, greyish 
white streaked with brown; lower parts rufous-brown, streaked with dark 
brown; tail, which is deeply forked, reddish brown, with dark bars. Bill 
horn colour; cere, irides, and tarsi yellow; claws black. The female 
bird is rather larger than the male, and has the underparts more rufous 
and the head greyer. 
