NOTES AND QUERIES. 109 



under-parts of the young birds being conspicuous. In Breconshire the 

 Raven still holds its own as a resident. I had the pleasure of seeing three 

 occupied nests of this bird last spring. On March 28th a nest on Talsarn 

 Mountain contained four young birds about a week old. This nest is built 

 on a ledge of a cliff, and is rather inaccessible ; according to the statement 

 of a shepherd living at the foot of the mountain, the young birds have been 

 allowed to leave the nest unmolested for the last ten or twelve years at least. 

 On April 1st a nest on the Brecon Beacons, built on an ash tree growing 

 out of the face of a precipice, contained two young birds a few days old, 

 which I believe were safely reared. This nest is not easy of access, but 

 can be well seen from a tree a few yards higher up, and nearly over it ; from 

 this spot I was able to make a rough sketch of the nest and its contents. 

 The Raven must be a wonderfully hardy bird; on March 4th, at Brecon, 

 we had fifteen degrees of frost, the lowest temperature of the winter, and 

 the weather was so severe that skating was going on, yet these two birds 

 must have been then sitting, and hatched most, at any rate, of their eggs. 

 Another Raven's nest was placed at the top of a Scotch fir, about 70 ft. from 

 the ground, in a cultivated part of the county. I have seen an egg which 

 was taken from this nest about the 1st of April ; it is a fine light blue 

 specimen. Is it not very unusual at the present time for the Raven to 

 build in such a situation? The Buzzard nests rather commonly in the 

 wild districts in the west of this county. On April 26th I found one of 

 their nests on a slope of a hill called Mynyd Eppynt, placed in a fork of a 

 larch tree some forty feet from the ground. We found the bird sitting on 

 two nearly fresh eggs, one of which I have in my collection ; it is a handsome 

 specimen, the blotches having a lilac tinge. The nest was flattish, in shape 

 like a Sparrowhawk's, but of course much larger : it was made of larch-twigs, 

 and lined with dry and green bracken and green spruce-twigs. Another 

 pair was evidently nesting in an adjoining wood. On April 28th I found 

 a Buzzard's nest in an oak-wood about three miles from Brecon ; it was 

 placed in a very stout oak, the lower twenty feet of which were branchless, 

 forming a difficult climb, but by ascending another tree I could see an egg 

 in the nest, and perhaps there were others also. In this case I could see 

 the bird on the nest, which it did not leave till I was at the foot of the tree. 

 Last summer the Grasshopper Warbler visited a fresh, and, for this district, 

 an unusual locality, — namely, a dry hedgerow close to this town. Here its 

 note was heard for several days in May- Its usual haunts here are swampy, 

 rushy alder covers : the three nests I have found here were all in places of 

 this kind. The Cirl Bunting visited this neighbourhood in some numbers 

 last summer. Including the specimen I obtained on June 4th, I. was able to 

 make out five male birds in song, and no doubt there were others about the 

 country. This bird retains its song much longer than most birds; one, in 

 particular, frequenting some tall whitethorn-bushes near the river Usk, was 



