492 Birds. 



they were tilled, Such information would go far to show whether the honey-buzzard 

 does or does not breed before it attains its adult plumage. My own impression is 

 that it does, and I am confirmed in this opinion by the following notice in Pennant's 

 ' British Zoology,' which runs thus. " Mr. Plymley has favoured us with a variety of 

 this species supposed to be a female, being shot off the nest ; it was entirely of a deep 

 brown colour, but had much the same marks on the wings and tail as the male, and 

 the head was tinged with ash-colour." Another fact which is somewhat in favour of 

 this idea, and which also goes to prove that this bird remains in pairs throughout the 

 year, has come to my knowledge, with regard to the specimen in the Norwich museum, 

 marked " No. 2" in Mr. Fisher's paper. This individual was a male bird, and a fe- 

 male was shot at the same place, and within two days of the same time, in exactly the 

 same state of plumage as the male, and I am informed that both of them had been 

 seen together immediately before the first was shot, in the act of jointly destroying a 

 wasps' nest on the side of a ditch. The migration of honey-buzzards to the coast of 

 Norfolk, which occurred early in the autumn of 1841, and which, I believe, extended 

 to several other counties in the southern and eastern part of the island, was remarkable 

 both for the number of specimens procured, and also for the great variety of age which 

 the plumage of the different individuals exhibited. This latter phenomenon is con- 

 trary to the usual course of our experience with regard to migratory birds, which is, 

 that the individuals of different ages and states of plumage, generally journey in dif- 

 ferent routes, each company being composed of birds in the same state of plumage. 

 This law, which is well explained in the preface to the first edition of Temminck's 'Ma- 

 nuel d'Ornithologie,' appears to be constantly in force in the case of a congener of the 

 honey-buzzard — the rough-legged buzzard — considerable numbers of which bird have 

 appeared at different intervals on our eastern coast; but always (so far as I have ob- 

 served) in the immature plumage of the first, or at most the second year exclusively, 

 without any old birds among them. In conclusion I may add an anecdote which was 

 related to me by an intelligent ornithologist in the west of England, and which con- 

 firms the truth of Willughby's statement, repeated by Buffon and Vieillot, that the 

 honey-buzzard " runs very swiftly, like a hen." My informant shot a honey-buzzard, 

 which he had been watching for some minutes through a hedge, and which had so en- 

 tirely the gait and manner of walking of a large gallinaceous bird, that he fired under 

 the full impression that he was shooting at some strange bird of that tribe, and had no 

 idea, until he picked it up, that it was a bird of prey. — J. H. Gurney ; Norwich, Fe- 

 bruary 6, 1844. 



Enquiry respecting a previous mention of an OtvVs nest. In Mr. Duncan's " Notes 

 on the Nests of Birds" (Zool. 383), it is mentioned that a gentleman saw, on a lofty 

 and almost inaccessible branch of a tree, a nest resembling that of the carrion crow or 

 of the owl, which proved to be that of a heron. I am not aware of an instance of an 

 owl's nest ever having been placed upon the branch of a tree. May not the word owl 

 in this case have been substituted for that of hawk? — Alfred Greenwood ; Penzance, 

 January, 1 844. 



Note on the Song of the Missel-thrush. A peculiarity in the song of the missel- 

 thrush which I have never seen remarked, is that it is given forth for some time con- 

 tinuously. The period for which it lasts is generally from two to five minutes at a 

 time. A pause of longer or shorter duration, in general of two or three minutes, then 

 occurs, and the song is resumed again. On the 11th of February, 1842, I watched 

 the motions of a missel-thrush which was singing near this house. It sang for about 



