134 BIRDS OF CHESHIRE. 
AMERICAN SWALLOW-TAILED KITE. 
ELANO{DES FURCATUS (Linneus). 
[At the sale of the Macclesfield Museum in June 
1861, a Swallow-tailed Kite, said to have been shot 
on the Mersey, was disposed of for £9, 10s! The 
claims of this Kite to rank as a British bird are ex- 
ceedingly slender, and it is not even clear that the 
Macclesfield specimen was referable to this species. 
Even if it were so, there is, as Mr. Howard Saunders 
points out, no evidence that this bird was obtained 
in a wild state, although it may have been brought 
over in a ship.] 
HONEY BUZZARD. 
PERNIS APIVORUS (Linnzeus). 
It is only very rarely that the Honey Buzzard has 
been noticed in Cheshire, and we know of only five 
occurrences during the last sixty years. Captain Con- 
greve has one in his collection which was obtained at 
Burton on September 22nd, 1841, and Mr. H. Garland 
has another which he shot at Aldford about thirty years 
later2 At Bowdon, on the 27th of May 1872, Mr. F. 
Nicholson obtained an adult male from a gamekeeper 
who had shot it a few minutes previously. It had 
evidently just despoiled a Song Thrush’s nest, for there 
were fragments of egg-shell at the base of its beak, 
and upon dissection Mr. Nicholson found two young 
1 F, Buckland, Meld, June 22, 1861. 
2 Mitchell, Birds of Lancashire, 2nd edition, 1892, p. 130. 
3 Dobie, op. cit. p. 315. 
