THE MARSH-HARRIER. 93 
eggs. The nests are constructed of sticks, stalks of plants, sedge, rush, and grass, 
varying in size with the situation; the eggs are bluish white, four to six in 
number, generally plain, but occasionally with a few rusty markings. The nest- 
lings are at first covered with white down, and in their first year are darker in 
plumage than the parent birds. In captivity Lord Lilford found all the Harriers 
to be extremely wild and restless, requiring a considerable space for the proper 
exercise of their wings. 
Family—FALCONID. Genus—CIRCUS. 
MarSH-HARRIER. 
Circus eruginosus, LINN. 
HUNDRED years ago the Marsh-Harrier, or, to give it its old familiar 
name, the Moor Buzzard, was a common English bird, frequenting and 
nesting on all swampy moors, and was especially abundant in the fen districts of 
the East of England. Col. Montagu described it as “the most common of the 
Falcon tribe about the sandy flats on the coast of Carmarthenshire, where they 
prey upon young rabbits; and we have seen no less than nine feeding at one 
time upon the carcase of a sheep.” 
In old days the Marsh-Harrier was a great pest to the keepers of rabbit-warrens, 
and the estuaries of most rivers were haunted by these birds where they persecuted 
the ducks and waders, and for this reason had the name of Duck Hawk commonly 
given to them. Drainage of fen lands, shooting and trapping, the destruction of 
their nests wherever found have combined to banish the Marsh-Harrier from our 
Ornis; the few noted at the present day are stragglers from the Continent, and 
it is extremely doubtful if in any part of the British Isles the bird can still be 
counted among our nesting species. Stevenson, in his “Birds of Norfolk,” 
published in 1866, writes that in his county where they were once so abundant 
VoL. 01 be 
