132 BRITISH BIRDS. 



field to a reed-bed. It seeks its food in true Harrier style, quartering the 

 ground regularly, beating up and down the fields in search of grasshoppers, 

 lizards, mice, and other small prey. Now and then it secures a small bird 

 which it has surprised before it had time to take wing, and occasionally it 

 pays a visit to some neighbouring mai-sh to pick up a frog or small 

 mammal. Its long and pointed wings give an especial gracefulness to its 

 flight; now it darts rapidly with half-closed wings, now it makes a sudden 

 turn with one wing elevated, and now it sails over the surface of the 

 ground with motionless outspread wings ; but with all its apparent power 

 of flight it seldom if ever pursues small birds if they attempt to escape. 

 Montagu's Harrier has also the habit of sailing in wide circles, like many 

 other birds of prey. Mr. Howard Saunders describes the female, which 

 he put off a nest in the Isle of ^Vight, as flying away in repeated and 

 gradually widening circles. The same feature was remarked on the return 

 to the nest : the wide circles gradually narrowed ; and the wings were 

 suddenly closed as she swept over the nest and droj)ped upon it. 



In Germany Montagu's Harrier is a somewhat late breeder. The 

 only time I have taken the nest was on the 23rd of last May. The 

 eggs were quite fresh. The nest is very difficult to find. Saunders's 

 nest above referred to was in a small clearing not two yards across, 

 amongst the gorse on the open heath, and was a mere hollow in the 

 ground lined with dry grass, with an outside border of heather twigs. The 

 nest I took was a few miles out of Halberstadt, in the middle of the great 

 praii'ie lying north of the Hartz Mountains. We were a party of four — our 

 host Oberamtmann Ferdinand Heine, Dr. Blasius of Brunswick, my son, 

 and myself. We were all in very high spirits, " coming thro' the rye " 

 with three Great Bustard's eggs which we had just taken. Suddenly we 

 observed a pair of Montagu's Plarriers flying over the corn, crying and 

 toying with each other almost like Terns. In this district of enormous 

 farms and high farming, the ground is very fertile, and the rye stood more 

 than five feet high in a field which could not be much less than a hundred 

 acres in extent. It seemed bke looking for a needle in a haystack ; but 

 our host and guide told us that several pairs of Harriers bred annually on 

 liis farm ; so we walked down each side of the rye, one of us followino- a 

 narrow path up the centre. We saw at different times five or six birds, 

 one pair especially seeming to show some anxiety at our presence. Finally 

 one of the birds dropjjcd somewhat suddenly into the waving corn 

 Dr. Blasius undertook to stalk her uj), but, when she rose, missed her with 

 both barrels. We were, however, delighted to find that she had risen from 

 her nest containing four fresh eggs. There was no hole whatever in the 

 ground ; the rye had only been trampled down, and a slight but somewhat 

 neat nest made of corn-stalks lined Avith a little dry straw. The nest was 

 rather more than nine inches in diameter and about two inches and a half 



