THE HONEY-BUZZARD. 135 
or the ends of branches of trees in full leaf, a preference being given to beech 
leaves; these leaves are continually replaced by the birds as they fade. Dresser 
has seen the nests protected with freshly plucked branches, as if to form an 
arbour to shade them, and judging from their greenness, considered that they must 
be changed daily. He remarks:—‘‘As soon as a nest is garnished with these 
green leaves one may look out for the eggs.” These are usually two in number, 
rarely three or four. An interval of a week is said to take place between the 
laying of each egg; incubation lasts three weeks; both the male and female take 
part in sitting. The eggs are rather round and glossy, very richly marked with 
brick-red and deep purple blood-red, upon a ground colour that varies from cream 
colour to pale brick-red; some of the varieties are very handsome. The dark 
colour is sometimes scratched across by pale lines, just as if a painter’s graining 
comb had been employed; similar scratches, of a bolder kind, also occur in the 
eggs of the Egyptian Vulture. The eggs measure from 2°05 to 1°86 inches, by 
from, 1°7 to r°55 inches, 
In a pair of adults the writer has in his collection from Hampshire the male 
has the crown of the head and sides of the face ash-grey, back of the head and 
nape brown; beak and tail grey-brown, some of the feathers on the back have 
lighter edgings; the tail has three darker bands, the subterminal the broadest, 
besides several other narrower wavy bands; under parts from chin to belly 
yellowish-white, the feathers rather sparingly streaked and barred with reddish- 
brown; primaries brownish-black above; greyish-white, barred with dark brown, 
below; cere, irides, and legs yellow; claws brownish-black; beak blackish horn. 
The female is brown all over, the breast and under surface of the wings 
yellowish-white, much barred with reddish-brown; on the tail are four darker 
bands, with other narrower wavy bands, and a few patches of yellowish white on 
some of the central rectrices; primaries brownish-black. 
The average length is about twenty inches, the female being but very slightly 
larger than the male. 
Very old males have the cap distinctly bluer, and the under parts almost 
entirely white, with only a few bars on the flanks. 
In the immature plumage there is considerable variation; the usual dress is 
a uniform chocolate brown all over, with darker primaries, and a white tip to the 
tail. A young bird in the writer’s collection, from Cambridgeshire, very closely 
approaches a variety figured by Dresser, in which the head and neck are yellowish 
white, some of the feathers being narrowly tipped and streaked with rufous-brown ; 
back rufous brown, many of the feathers blotched and edged with white; under 
parts yellowish white, closely streaked in the centre of the feathers with dark 
