106 THE ZOOLOGIST. 
time to time visited Europe, have not come from the west across the 
Atlantic, or vid Iceland and the Feroes, but in company with the in- 
numerable rare migrants which are annually identified on the island of 
Heligoland, and which have their breeding haunts in Siberia and Kam- 
schatka, and have come to us and other European countries from the east 
and north-east, across the great plains of Siberia, just as Pallas’s Sand 
Grouse did when visiting Europe in 1878. He concluded by drawing 
attention to the importance of recording, along with the capture of rare 
birds upon our shores, the meteorological phenomena of the time of their 
arrival. Were this always done by the recorders some real service might 
be rendered to science by the accumulation of valuable data. 
Nestinc Hairs or tax Common Buzzarp. — Near our village of 
Gosforth is a small valley, watered by the little River Bleng, and hence 
called Blengdale, which for the last four years has been constantly 
haunted by a pair of Buzzards. The sides of the valley rising abruptly 
on each side of the river are very steep and covered with grass. There are 
no crags, however, in it, and only some eight or nine trees, which trees 
contain every year three or four nests of the Carrion Crow. Rather than 
quit their accustomed ground, the Buzzards built their nest last year in a 
common thorn-bush growing about forty feet up the slope. Hearing of this 
unusual nesting-place, I went to examine it, but arrived too late. The nest 
was there, about eight feet from the ground, being apparently based upon an 
old crow’s nest, but the three eggs, which were remarkably well-coloured 
specimens, had been taken that morning by a neighbouring gamekeeper. 
Exactly a month afterwards I revisited the locality, and found that the 
obstinate birds still held possession. About three hundred yards higher up 
the valley than the thorn-bush was a small “scar,” twenty-five feet high, 
out of which grew a stunted tree holding a fresh nest containing three eggs, 
on which the hen-bird was sitting. Scrambling down to it from above, I 
found this second clutch almost as well coloured as the first three, which 
the keeper had meanwhile placed under a tame hen Buzzard. She sat 
upon them for thirty-one days, and hatched all three; but in spite of the 
united care of bird and keeper they all died when about ten days old. The 
old bird always sucked and chewed a piece of meat for three or four 
minutes before she gave it to the young ones. About three weeks 
afterwards we procured a half-grown Buzzard from a third nest on Seat 
Allan and gave it to the tame one to rear, but this also she failed to 
accomplish. I have four eggs in my collection which were laid by this 
tame Buzzard. On one occasion we put some hen’s eggs under her, which 
she hatched and reared. Another tame Buzzard near here was hatched 
and brought up by a bantam-hen, the difference in size between the two 
being most absurd. The above case is only the second instance I have met 
with of a Buzzard nesting in a tree, as in this district they usually prefer 
