CH. IV.] ANECDOTE OF BUZZARDS. 193 
been the bird seen in company with the other, 
to which it might, being disabled from catering 
for itself, have been indebted for its means of 
sustenance. If such had been the case, it would 
probably in about that time after the death of 
its companion have pined away and died from 
want. It was very poor, though perhaps not quite 
such a skeleton as might have been expected if 
its death had resulted simply from starvation. 
There used to be a good many Buzzards in 
that part of the country until within the last 
forty or fifty years. An old gamekeeper on the 
property where the two last mentioned were found, 
on whose word I could most thoroughly depend, 
has told me that a pair used to build every year 
in a particular tree in a covert three or four miles 
from the farm last mentioned, and that, as re- 
gularly, he used to destroy at least one, if not 
both of the old birds. He assured me, however, 
that the fact of his having killed both the old birds 
made not the slightest difference, and that the 
following year another pair invariably built or 
reconstructed their nest in the same tree. This, 
he told me, went on for a good many years, until 
the tree in which the birds had been accustomed to 
build was cut down, when, with it, the attraction 
) 
