128 British Birds, with their Nests and Eggs 



Although there is but little iuformation on the point the writer believes that the 

 Kite was niigrator}^ the greater number arriving in the spring, and departing 

 again in the autumn. Montagu says " the Kite chiefly inhabits wooded situations, 

 but frequently changes its abode in the winter, though it never wholly quits this 

 country." It was already very rare in Devonshire in his time,* although still 

 common in many other parts of the kingdom. At the present day one or two 

 pairs are resident in the central districts of Wales, and possibly in a few places 

 in the Scotch Highlands, but they have so precarioiis a tenure that it is to be 

 feared that by the end of this century there will be no Kites nesting anywhere 

 in the British Isles. When the writer was an undergraduate at Oxford, old 

 Osman, the bird-stuffer, used to speak of the Kites he had seen soaring in the 

 air over Folly bridge, and various friends have described how they had themselves, 

 in their youth, seen it often enough in Wales where it used to be the dread of 

 the hen-wives. The last nest in England was probably the one in Lincolnshire, 

 in 1870. In Scotland Macgillivray who, however, had never seen a nest, could 

 speak of it as far from uncommon in 1840 in Dumbarton, Argyle, and Perth ; in 

 the first of these counties it is no longer resident, the last nests known to Robert 

 Gray having been in 1858; when he published his account of the "Birds of the 

 West of Scotland," in 1871, he considered it doubtful if the Kite then bred any- 

 where except in the counties of Perth, Inverness, and Aberdeen. In various 

 shooting visits to the last named county in late years, the writer has never seen 

 or heard of a Kite, and it is only too probable that the destruction of the bird 

 has progressed rapidly, especially as its feathers are sought after for salmon flies. 

 It used to be very common in Sutherlandshire, " but the cutting down of all the 

 large trees and continued trapping have done their work," writes Harvie-Brown, 

 " and the Kite exists there no longer." There is not a single specimen in the 

 museum at Dunrobin. In Wales the greed of collectors for " British " eggs of 

 the Kite is a potent factor in its extinction. Why an egg of the Kite laid in 

 Wales should be valued at £2. or £t,, while the eggs of German Kites may be 

 bought of dealers, to any number, at a shilling each, passes the writer's compre- 

 hension ; he deeply regrets that it should be so, as it appears to him that British 

 naturalists ought to do their best towards the preservation of interesting birds, 

 instead of being mainly instrumental' in their extirpation. In the early summer 

 of 1888, a pair of Kites appeared near Dorchester, and might have nested, had 

 not one of them unfortunately been poisoned. In the greater part of the Kingdom 

 the Kite is now only a very rare straggler, and few British Ornithologists have 

 seen it on wing in their own country. A few of the Welsh Kites occasionally 



* The beginning of the present century. 



