The Marsh-Harrier 



93 



eggs. The uests are constructed of sticks, stalks of plants, sedge, nish, and grass, 

 varying in size with the situation ; the eggs are bluish white, four to six in 

 number, generally plain, but occasionally with a few rusty markings. The nest- 

 lings are at first covered with white down, and in tlicir first year are darker in 

 plumage than the parent birds. In captivity Lord Lilford found all the Harriers 

 to be extremely wild and restless, requiring a considerable space for the proper 

 exercise of their wings. 



Family— FALCONID^. Genus— CIRCUS. 



Marsh-Harrier. 



Circus aruginosus, Linn. 



A HUNDRED years ago the Marsh-Harrier, or, to give it its old familiar 

 name, the Moor Buzzard, was a common English bird, frequenting and 

 nesting on all swampy moors, and was especially abundant in the fen districts of 

 the East of England. Col. Montagu described it as " the most common of the 

 Falcon tribe about the sandy flats on the coast of Carmarthenshire, where thev 

 prey upon young rabbits ; and we have seen no less than nine feeding at one 

 time upon the carcase of a sheep." 



In old days the Marsh-Harrier was a great pest to the keepers of rabbit-warrens, 

 and the estuaries of most rivers were haunted by these birds where they persecuted 

 the ducks and waders, and for this reason had the name of Duck Hawk commonlv 

 given to them. Drainage of fen lands, shooting and trapping, the destruction of 

 their nests wherever found have combined to banish the Marsh-Harrier from our 

 Ornis ; the few noted at the present day are stragglers from the Continent, and 

 it is extremely doubtful if in any part of the British Isles the bird can still be 

 counted among our nesting species. Stevenson, in his " Birds of Norfolk,'" 

 published in 1866, writes that in his count}- where the}- were once so abundant- 



