16 BIRD LIFE IN WILD WALES 



blades. There are three eggs, real beauties. One in 

 particular calls for our admiration, being splashed and 

 mottled with rich rusty red on a bluish white ground. 

 Another is marked heavily at the smaller end. 



When we first see these Buzzards they are waging 

 war with a pair of Carrion Crows, which have 

 evidently approached their sanctuary too closely, 

 probably with an eye to the huge eggs lying so 

 temptingly exposed on the steep hillside. 



The two Buzzards are now thoroughly aroused, 

 and having driven off the Crows, turn their attention 

 to us, the female actually coming within a few yards. 

 The great talons are easily visible as with straightened 

 legs she prepares to stoop at us, but abandoning this 

 idea, contents herself by swooping round above us 

 within easy gunshot, mewing the while. This Hawk's 

 cry is best rendered, we think, by a prolonged and 

 plaintive " seiou," uttered chiefly during the season of 

 reproduction. Here now let us leave them in their 

 mountain fastness with a sincere hope that many 

 broods of Buzzards will swell the feathered throng for 

 years to come. Here may their wild scream resound 

 year by year in the solitary flyfisher's ear, and may 

 he be sportsman enough to realise how desirable it is 

 that so useful but so fast a decreasing species should 

 be preserved with all the rigour of the law. 



With a fleeting glimpse of a Raven's nest containing 

 young we must finish. Fortunately we find that the 

 young have not flown (though it is now May 5th) 

 and often enough they are fledged ere this, for Ravens 

 are one of the first birds to go to nest. 



This nest is in a steep little dingle running at 



