44 BIRDS OF THE WEST OF SCOTLAND. 



taken in a trap by Mr J. Fulger, the Duke of Northumberland's 

 gamekeeper, a few days before, in the red 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 proved on dissection to be a male." 



According to Mr Tristram (see Ibis, vol. i. N.S., p. 256), this 

 bird, which appears to occur in immense numbers in Palestine, 

 makes a nest quite as unsymmetrical as that of the common Kite. 

 " It is found," says Mr Tristram, " generally in a tree, often in a 

 glen, and is a grotesque, untidy structure, decorated with all sorts 

 of rags and rubbish, apparently to attract observation."* In vol. 

 ii. of the same journal (p. 185), some interesting notes on the 

 species are given by Lord Lilford, who mentions having found in 

 the foundations of one nest three nests of the Spanish sparrow. 



Owing to the present scarcity of Kites in our own country, not 

 many opportunities of comparing or carefully examining speci- 

 mens are now likely to occur. It would be well, however, for 

 collectors, or others who may chance to be favoured with speci- 

 mens, to scrutinize them, as, if the present work of extermination 

 continues, the one species is about as likely now-a-days to make 

 its appearance as the other. 



THE SWALLOW-TAILED KITE. 



NA UCLERUS FURCA TUS. 



THIS bird is inserted here as a Scottish species on the authority 

 already given by the late Dr Fleming in his " History of British 

 Animals," and repeated by subsequent writers, for the occurrence 

 of a single specimen at Ballachulish, in Argyleshire, in 1772. In 

 September, 1805, another was caught alive near Hawes in York- 



* In speaking of the Egyptian Kite, an allied species found in the Great 

 Sahara, the same author, with characteristic humour, says, " Its nest, the 

 marine-store shop of the desert, is decorated with whatever scraps of burnouses 

 and coloured rags can be collected; and to these are added, on every surround- 

 ing branch, the cast-off coats of serpents, large scraps of thin bark, and perhaps 

 a bustard's wing." Birds of the Sahara, p. 392. 



