98 FALCONID^. 



It was taken in a trap by Mr. F. Fulger, the Duke of 

 Northumberland's game-keeper, a few days before, in the 

 Ked Deer Park at Alnwick. This is, I believe, the first 

 time that this fine rapacious bird has occurred in Britain.* 

 The plumage was in very good condition, except on the 

 lower part of the body (where it had sustained some injury 

 from the trap), and agrees with that of mature specimens 

 in my collection, which I received from the Continent some 

 years ago. It was proved by dissection to be a male." 



M. Jules Verreaux has informed Mr. Gurney that the 

 Black Kite in France appears to be now more abundant than 

 formerly, and apparently in proportion as the Red Kite is 

 growing rarer. Dr. Bruch also, in the ' Journal fur Orni- 

 thologie ' for 1854 (p. 278), states that in the neighbourhood 

 of Mayence, this species becomes commoner year by year. 

 In many parts of the continent, no doubt, the Black Kite, 

 like other birds which suffer much persecution during the 

 breeding- season, is becoming scarcer ; but the evidence of 

 two ornithologists, so well-informed as those just named, as 

 to its increase in certain localities, leads naturally to the 

 supposition mentioned in the first sentence of this article. 



Throughout nearly the whole of its wide range, the Black 

 Kite is a migratory bird, passing northward in spring, and 

 returning southward in autumn, so as fully to justify the 

 earliest specific name, the bestowal of which upon it can 

 be recognized that of migrans, by Boddaert, though the 

 appellation of niger, which it received from Brisson, con- 

 tinues to be used by many writers. The name of ater, 



* It must be observed, however, that Sibbald, in his ' Scotia Illustrata' (part 

 iii. p. 15), published in 1684, includes among the animals of Scotland " Milvus 

 niger, a black Cried. An Lanius?"; and Don, in his Account of the Plants and 

 Animals of Forfarshire, published, in 1813, as an Appendix to Headrick's ' General 

 View of the Agriculture of the County of Angus,' inserts in his list of birds (p. 39), 

 between the names of Falco milvus and F. buteo, " Falco ater ; black eagle : on 

 heaths and low hills." It is hardly probable that any light could now be thrown 

 upon the species intended by the first of these writers ; but the localities given 

 by the second, as those frequented by the bird he meant, almost preclude the 

 possibility of its being the Falco ater of Grmelin the real Black Kite of authors, 

 which, as will presently appear, is rather a woodland species ; and it seems not 

 altogether unlikely that a Marsh-Harrier might have misled Don. 



