4o8 RECREATIONS OF A NATURALIST 



Churchill Babington has mentioned some more 

 recent instances of the occurrence of the Kite in 

 Norfolk and Suffolk in his volume on the birds of 

 the latter county (1886), but he is compelled to add : 

 " This bird has now become so rare as to be hardly 

 ever seen in the county. Scarcely any specimens 

 have been obtained in the last five-and-twenty 

 years." 



In Lincolnshire the Kite, as a resident and 

 breeding species, lingered somewhat longer, a fact 

 which is probably to be attributed to its being still 

 able to find concealment during the nesting season 

 in some of the great woods of that county. Mr 

 Adrian, of Lincoln, informed Professor Newton, in 

 1864, that Kites in Lincolnshire were then becoming 

 scarcer every year. This he attributed partly to the 

 destruction of the birds, and partly to that of their 

 favourite haunts, by the felling and stubbing of the 

 woods, in two of which 100 acres had been cut down 

 since the beginning of the year, and this in the best 

 locality. 



In his account of the Kite published in the fourth 

 edition of Yarrell's ^rzVw/^ Birds, Professor Newton 

 remarks : " There were nests in Lincolnshire until 

 the year 1857, but, owing in a great measure to the 

 cutting down of the woods, it has probably been 

 driven from that locality." Happily this has not 

 proved to be the case. A nest of the Kite was 

 found in Bullington Wood, near Wragby, in that 

 county, in 1870, and there is reason to believe that 

 the species lingered there even a few years longer. 



According to Jabez Allies, author of the 



