94 BRITISH BIRDS, WITH THEIR NESTS AND EGGS. 
that Lubbock said they might be well called the Norfolk Hawk, “their breeding 
grounds are confined almost entirely to such quiet and preserved localities as 
Ranworth, Barton, Horsey, and Hickling, where the shriek of the railway whistle 
has not yet scared them from their natural haunts. In the above districts a few 
pairs of the Marsh-Harrier, as I learn from the most reliable sources, remain 
with us throughout the year.’ But as the marsh-men shoot down every one of 
these birds they see, and rob their nests, it is to be feared that even in these 
quiet sanctuaries since these words were written the birds have well nigh disap- 
peared. Another part of England where, perhaps, a pair or two of Marsh-Harriers 
may still be left to nest is the district round Wareham, in Dorsetshire, where the 
birds are dangerous neighbours to the Gullery of Brown-headed Gulls at Ower, 
robbing the eggs and devouring the young Gulls. In Scotland Mr. R. Gray 
states that the Marsh-Harrier (he published his Birds of the West of Scotland in 
1871) was comparatively common in the district of Nether Lochaber, and also in 
Appin in Argyleshire; he had himself been familiar with it as an East Lothian 
species, having examined a number of specimens that had been shot in that 
county, and had noticed many years before its partiality for ducks and pigeons 
on the Tyne estuary. It was once common in many places in Ireland, until it 
had been well nigh exterminated by poison laid for it by the keepers. The 
Ornithologist of the present day, unless he visits one of the haunts where in 
former times it was most numerous, and where a chance pair may still survive, 
is hardly likely to encounter it anywhere in the British Isles, and must go abroad 
and look for it in the marismas of South Spain, or in the marshes of the Delta 
in Egypt, would he know what it is like on wing. Except in the far north the 
Marsh-Harrier.is largely distributed over Europe in country suitable to its habits, 
avoiding woods and enclosed districts, and selecting moors and swamps. It extends 
far to the east in Asia, and is met with in Africa so far to the south as the 
Transvaal. 
The Marsh-Harrier flies rather heavily low above the ground when hunting, 
pouncing down occasionally to secure some victim. The writer has encountered 
it when he has been after snipe and wild-fowl in North Devon and Wales, and 
once watched an old male fishing in some shallow pools left by the tide in the 
estuary of the Taw, the bird plunging every now and then heavily and awkwardly 
into the water. It used to be a frequent visitor to decoys for ducks, where its 
presence excited great alarm in the assembled fowl; its favourite food consists of 
the eggs and young of Coots, Moor-hens, and Wild Duck; fish, frogs, lizards, 
water-rats, dragon-flies, etc., also enter upon its ménu. This thief and plunderer 
is easily to be caught in a trap baited with an egg. 
