Lost British Birds. 



27 



it has been called Blue Hawk and Dove Hawk ; in figure 

 it is more slender and airy than the other raptors, and it 

 has a singularly buoyant and graceful flight, not unlike that 

 of a gull, as it beats over the ground in quest of prey, often 

 riding so low as almost to touch the surface. 



That this bird is now wholly extinct in Great Britain it 

 would scarcely be safe to affirm ; one can only say, that, 

 like the preceding species (ruff and reeve), it is practically 

 extinct. Mr. Howard Saunders, in his Manual of British 

 Bird*, writes : " Of late years its numbers have been so far 

 thinned by game-preservers that it is now only to be found 



