122 FALCONIIXK. 



owing to its numbers being increased in autumn by an 

 immigration, which is chiefly noticeable on the east coast, 

 from abroad ; those so arriving being mostly birds of the 

 year. It has long been known to breed in England. Wil- 

 lughby, who was the first to give this species an English 

 name, describes two young Honey-Buzzards which he saw 

 in a nest that had formerly been a Kite's. They were 

 covered with white down, through which the dark feathers 

 were appearing, and had been fed with wasp-grubs, lizards 

 and frogs. Pennant in 1766 figured a supposed hen bird 

 which was shot from her nest containing two eggs, and all 

 English naturalists are familiar with the account given by 

 Gilbert White of the nest in a tall slender beech in Sel- 

 borne Hanger, to which, in 1780, a bold boy climbed and 

 brought down the single egg it contained. In 1794 Dr. 

 Heysham mentioned that it had bred in Cumberland. For 

 some time however it was usually thought that there was 

 no more recent instance of the Honey-Buzzard breeding in 

 this country, though the British Museum contained a speci- 

 men from Cornwall with its primaries not fully grown, and 

 Mr. Gould in 1837 was aware that the species bred annually 

 at Burnham Beeches (Mag. Nat. Hist. N.S. i. p. 539), 

 while not long after Macgillivray recorded a nest with three 

 eggs taken in Aberdeen shire. In ' The Zoologist ' for 

 1844 (p. 237) the late Mr. Wilmot gave an interesting 

 account of a pair of birds, shot in Wellgrove Wood near 

 Henley-on-Thames, in 1838, which had a nest with two 

 eggs, one of which is now in the Wolley Collection, while 

 the skins of the parents are in the possession of Mr. Fuller- 

 Maitland. Mention was in the same place made of a pair 

 killed at Stoneleigh in Warwickshire in 1841, which also 

 had a nest. Since this time instances have been recorded 

 of the Honey-Buzzard breeding in Northumberland, Shrop- 

 shire, Staffordshire and Northamptonshire to say nothing 

 of the New Forest, where it still almost yearly breeds 

 or attempts to breed, for between the desire of collectors 

 to possess specimens and of gamekeepers and idlers to 

 provide them, it has but little chance of accomplishing its 



