8 



any apparent cause, disappear, and not return again until several years have elapsed. I cannot 

 find any cause to account for this ; but it may possibly be owing to the scarcity of its favourite 

 food that it leaves the locality. Owing to the late season when its eggs are deposited, the trees 

 being then in full leaf, it is very difficult to discover its nest; and hence it may often breed 

 regularly in a locality where its nest is seldom found. Mr. Carl Sachse, of Altenkirchen, in 

 Rhenish Prussia, writing to me respecting its breeding-habits, says, "here the bird is not rare 

 in mountains six to nine hundred feet above the level of the sea ; but their late breeding-time 

 makes it difficult to find the nest, as the oaks and beeches are then in full foliage. The nest is 

 placed both in the dense deep forest and in the groves in the fields, generally close to the trunk 

 of the tree, and from twenty to fifty feet from the ground, and is generally not very difficult to 

 get at. Here the nest is always placed in an oak or beech tree of from one to three feet 

 diameter, and generally a deserted nest of a Buzzard or Kite. A fortnight, or even longer, 

 before the eggs are deposited the birds bring fresh leaves (almost always those of the beech) to 

 the nest, and do this daily until the eggs are half incubated ; indeed I found fresh leaves in a 

 nest on the 11th of May, 1867, in which I only found a couple of fresh eggs on the 2nd of June. 

 The two eggs are deposited after an interval of six or eight days, as I have had an opportunity 

 of observing in three instances. On the 23rd of June, 1869, I took out of a nest one egg, and 

 on the 29th of June the second one, quite fresh ; on the 28th of May, 1862, one egg was in the 

 nest, and the second was not deposited until the 6th of June. In the third instance I did not 

 note down all the particulars at the time; but I believe it was in 1857, and I am certain that the 

 two eggs were deposited after an interval of six days. The bird sits very close, and I have 

 several times observed it, when the climber had almost reached the bough on which the nest 

 was placed, slip quietly off the nest and run along the bough, and then fly off. On the 6th of 

 June, 1 870, I struck the tree, in which a nest was placed about twenty feet from the ground, 

 repeatedly ; but the bird remained on it, and only when we had hammered away violently at the 

 tree for some time did it rise and stand on the edge of the nest, shake itself, look astonished, 

 and then sit down quietly again on the eggs as if nothing had happened. When the climber 

 had almost reached the nest, the bird left, but soon returned, and perched on the next tree so 

 close that I could easily have shot it. After the eggs (which were fresh) were taken and packed 

 up, the bird flew off and circled for some time round the nest — at a great height, however. Both 

 male and female incubate ; and the sitting bird, when on the nest, is regularly fed by the other 

 with wasps' nests in which the grubs are. 



"On the 14th of June, 1868, I shot a male as it left the nest; and the incubation-spot 

 showed that the bird had sat no little time on the eggs, which were eight days incubated. 

 This bird left the nest only when the climber had reached and grasped the bough on which the 

 nest was, and which was about fifty feet from the ground. On the same day I took another nest 

 about eight miles distant from the one above referred to, which was placed in the main fork of 

 an oak tree about forty feet from the ground. Out of this nest I took two eggs of the common 

 Buzzard on the 26th April ; and when fourteen days subsequently I climbed to the nest I found it 

 tenanted by a Honey-Buzzard, lined with fresh beech leaves, and in it lay a half-eaten Blackbird. 



" Only one fresh egg was in the nest, and the other one was on the ground close to the foot 

 of the tree ; indeed I almost trod on it, and only noticed it as I bent down before throwing the 



