14 BIRDS OF TIERRA DEL FUEGO 



Atlantic Coast. The flight is particularly easy and graceful, 

 with its large expanse of wing and tail. Sometimes it sweeps 

 the land in wide circles within gunshot from below ; sometimes 

 it steers a straight course up wind at a lofty height; some- 

 times it remains poised high above earth, with never a wing 

 beat for minutes on end. Invariably almost this bird occurs in 

 pairs, which seem inseparably affectionate. It has little fear of 

 man. I killed my first spechnen with the '410, ISTo. 7 shot, 

 flying low overhead, on the track between San Sebastian Bay 

 and Sara Settlement. As far as my observations go, it preys 

 exclusively on rodents. Five examples examined by me 

 contained the remains of Ctenomys magellatricus. 



In the Falkland Islands, Darwin found it preying chiefly 

 on " rabbits which have run wild and abound over certain parts." 



Durnford says small rodents are its prey. 



Capt. Abbott records this Buzzard common in the Falkland 

 Islands, more especially in those parts where there are many wild 

 rabbits, these being its principal food. " The nest," he says, 

 " is generally situated on a cliff near the shore, or high rocks in 

 the camp, and is composed of the dry sticks of the two Falkland 

 Island bushes with generally a piece of dry grass on the top, 

 and the nests appear to be built up higher every year. A 

 singular nest, which I saw at Salvador Bay, w^as built in the 

 open camp, on a small bush, and was, I should think, 5 feet high 

 from the ground. The eggs are laid about the beginning of 

 October, although I have taken a single egg in September ; and 

 the number is two, or sometimes three." 



In Tierra del Fuego, the nest is built either high up in 

 a tree on the outskirts of forest, or on the top of a scrubby 

 bush no more than five or six feet from the ground. I have 

 seen many in both such situations. In the Sierra Carmen Sylva, 

 in early October, I took an egg from a nest on the top of a bush. 

 The nest was large and coarsely built of sticks, almost flat, with 

 hardly an attempt at lining. The egg is a regular blunt oval, 

 with somewhat rough surface, without gloss. It is bluish 



