KITES. 119 



longer in proportion, and its habits are a little more active. 

 It preys upon smaller game, bees, wasps, beetles, dragon- 

 flies, frogs, lizards, and" occasionally small birds. Its motion 

 when hawking for its food, especially for dragon-flies near 

 the pools and streams, is very light and gliding ; and it slides 

 through the branches of trees with more apparent ease than 

 could be expected in a bird of so large a size. It migrates on 

 the continent, and in all probability passes the Mediterra- 

 nean towards winter. Its nest has been seen in some of the 

 forests of the south of England.* 



The buzzards are all woodland birds, and although they 

 are adapted for and inhabit different latitudes, there is so 

 much similarity and family likeness among them, that one 

 who has seen the common buzzard, can be at no loss in 

 knowing the others, if by rare accident they should come in 



his way. 



KITES. 



There is but one species of kite met with in the British 

 islands, the common kite, or glead (Falco milvus), but it is by 

 no means uncommon ; and its form, the style of its flight, 

 and the depredations which it commits, all tend to bring it 

 into notice. 



The lineal dimensions of the kite are very considerable; 

 the wings of the female extend five feet and a half, and the 



* A male specimen of the honey-buzzard was shot, September 1829, 

 in Thrunton Wood, Northumberland ; and a beautiful variety, with a 

 white head and neck, was killed in October 1831, at Cheswick, near 

 Berwick-upoii-Tweed. 



On the llth of June, 1833, a fine male specimen (seen in company with 

 another, the female most probably) was shot by Robert G. Bomford, Esq., 

 in his demesne of Annan dale, in the vicinity of Belfast. The stomach 

 was full of larvae, of fragments of coleopterous insects, of whitish hairy 

 coloured caterpillars, of the pupae of a butterfly, and of fragments of the 

 pupa of the six-spot burnet-moth, together with some pieces of grass, 

 taken in, no doubt, with the pupae of the moth. (See Mag. Nat. Hist , 

 1833, vol. v. p. 447.) M. 



