288 HONEY-BUZZARDS. 



prise. Yet there is a season of the year (usually the 

 beginning of June) when his exertions are remark- 

 able. He then walks on tiptoe, and is stirring by 

 five in the morning ; and, traversing the garden, 

 examines every wicket and interstice in the fences, 

 through which he will escape if possible ; and often 

 has eluded the care of the gardener, and wandered to 

 some distant field. The motives that impel him to 

 undertake these rambles seem to be of the amorous 

 kind : his fancy then becomes intent on sexual at- 

 tachments, which transport him beyond his usual 

 gravity, and induce him to forget for a time his 

 ordinary solemn deportment. 



LETTER XCITI. 



TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQ. 



A PAIR of honey-buzzards, buteo apivorus, sive 

 vespivorus, Raii, built them a large shallow nest, 

 composed of twigs, and lined with dead beechen 

 leaves, upon a tall slender beech near the middle of 

 Selborne hanger, in the summer of 1780. In the 

 middle of the month of June, a bold boy climbed 

 this tree, though standing on so steep and dizzy a 

 situation, and brought down an egg, the only one in 

 the nest, which had been set on for some time, and 

 contained the embryo of a young bird. The egg was 

 smaller, and not so round, as those of the common 

 buzzard ; was dotted at each end with small red 

 spots, and surrounded in the middle with a broad 

 bloody zone. 



The hen bird was shot, and answered exactly to 

 Mr. Ray's description of that species : had a black 

 cere, short thick legs, and a long tail. When on 



