4656 THE ZooLocist—OcToOBER, 1875. 
I fancy that few, if any, of the males of the Circine do so; cer- 
tainly I never flushed a male Montagu or a male marsh harrier 
(C. eruginosus) from the nest, and I have visited some scores of 
them. Towards evening the female, when put off the nest, would 
sometimes, after flying in repeated and gradually widening circles, 
begin to quarter the ground regularly for food, and I have occa- 
sionally seen her settle down for a short time, doubtless to devour 
whatever had been seized; but until the first egg was hatched she 
was almost always on the nest at the time of each visit. On leaving 
the nest she generally circled over the valley, taking wide sweeps 
over the coombe of the hills, and, after a short disappearance, she 
would suddenly come over the brow from some unexpected quarter, 
so that any attempt at concealment, except in a place where one 
could see nothing oneself, would have been fruitless; but at a 
distance of some two hundred yards, or rather more, was a con- 
venient line of gorse, whence we could easily observe her with our 
glasses, and our presence there did not seem to interfere with a 
return to the nest. When rooks were about, and particularly if 
they crossed the line of the nest, she displayed great anxiety, and 
occasionally made a dash at one or two of those nearest, sometimes 
uttering a cry, something like that of a kestrel, but feebler and 
more querulous. There was reason for her antagonism, for both 
rooks and carrion crows (there are plenty of the latter in the Island) 
showed by their movements that they were perfectly aware of the 
position of the eggs, and I soon learned to dread them more than 
any prowling cowherds. It was necessary to run some risk to 
ascertain when and how many eggs were laid, but my movements 
were always made as quietly as possible. Several times, by crawling 
on hands and knees for some distance, and availing myself of a 
small tunnel in the lower part of the gorse, I got to within a couple 
of feet of the sitting bird, and on two occasions a small bird, a 
titlark I think, gave an alarm-note, at which the bird rose: a few 
seconds more, and I should have actually seen her on the nest, for 
only a few inches separated me from the clearing. The titlark, or 
whatever it was, frequented the same bare space, but it certainly 
had no nest there after the fashion of the Spanish sparrows (Passer 
hispaniolensis), which breed in colonies in the foundations of the 
nests of eagles and other large raptors. It was very interesting to 
watch the movements of the harrier when returning to her nest: 
the wide circles which had enabled her to take in the position of 
