350 Wild Life in Wales 



graph reproduced below shows a nest in Craig-y-tan birch- 

 wood, with the position to which the climber had attained 

 before this bird left her eggs, and was shot by a man below. 

 By a strange anomaly of sentiment, many keepers regard it 

 as cruel to shoot the bird on her nest, and will hardly be 

 persuaded to do so, though they have no compunction in 

 killing her as she flies from it. 



There was a nest on another man's beat which I saved 

 from destruction by a very simple device, and from which 

 the young eventually flew. This nest was in a low birch 

 tree, close to a path, and so conspicuous that it could hardly 

 have escaped otherwise. There was a large fragment of 

 rock, however, only a few yards away, whose top stood 

 nearly as high as the nest, and which was covered with a 

 thick growth of heather. After the hen had begun to sit, 

 I lifted the nest bodily out of the tree, and transferred it to 

 the rock, and, concealed from view amongst the heather, 

 its presence there was never suspected. So far from being 

 alarmed at the liberty thus taken with her home, the hen 

 fell in with the arrangement nicely ; and several times, when 

 I passed, by climbing a tree a short way above, I was able 

 to see her sitting on the nest. Some of the young were 

 subsequently photographed as " branchers." 



Of all the Sparrow-Hawks' nests which I have seen, how- 

 ever, 1 never knew one to be built otherwise than in a tree, 

 and am inclined to think that, where the contrary has been 

 asserted, a mistake in the identification of the bird must 

 have been made. Only once do I recollect seeing a nest 

 that was not in a wood meaning thereby any collection of 

 trees, for, upon occasion, quite a small spinny will suffice, 

 and that was in a birch forming one of a straggling fringe 

 to a mountain stream, in a Merionethshire valley, and not 

 very far away from other trees that were thinly scattered 

 over the slope. 



All hawks are known here as Hebog^ Gwalch, or Cudyll ; 

 the latter, sometimes written Curyll^ is the usual name 

 applied to the Sparrow-Hawk, though not infrequently it 

 is distinguished as Corwalch. " As bright as a hawk's eye," 

 is a local proverb, which the eye of a Sparrow- Hawk amply 



