LETTER XLIII 



TO THE SAME 



A pair of honey-buzzards, buteo apivorus, sive vespivorus 

 Rail, 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 I780. 1 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 sat 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 the wing this species 

 may be easily distinguished from the common buzzard 

 by its hawk-like appearance, small head, wings not so 

 blunt, and longer tail. This specimen contained in its 

 craw some limbs of frogs and many grey snails without 

 shells. The irides of the eyes of this bird were of a 

 beautiful bright yellow colour. 



About the tenth of July in the same summer a pair 

 of sparrow-hawks bred in an old crow's negt on a low 

 beech in the same hanger ; and as their brood, which 

 was numerous, began to grow up, became so daring and 



1 The " Honey-Buzzard " (Pemis apivorus) no longer breeds regularly in 

 England, but it is not so many years ago that nests used to be taken in the New 

 Forest. {R. B. S.] 



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