BIRDS 205 



bird had only recently become extinct when he went to live at 

 Watermillock in 1840. Mr. J. W. Harris, whose experience 

 carries us back as far at any rate as the ' thirties/ assures me 

 that he perfectly remembers seeing Kites, which came down 

 from the direction of Skiddaw to feed upon offal thrown out 

 from the tan yards at Cockermouth. He was young at the 

 time, but describes with wonderful accuracy (to one who has 

 studied Kites with some care, though not in Britain) the fine 

 flight of the species, the outspread tail, and general appearance 

 of this Kite as viewed upon the wing. It is to be regretted that 

 Richardson, who knew the Kite in Ulleswater at the time that 

 it bred in Windermere, contented himself with remarking that 

 it was a resident species. Dr. Heysham apparently took his cue 

 from Richardson, whose paper he had seen, when he wrote that 

 the Kite bred in the woods near Ullswater. With regard to the 

 doctor's statement, as to the Kite breeding at Armathwaite in 

 his time, we have no difficulty in accepting his word that it was 

 so. He does not suggest that he had seen a nest himself, though 

 possibly he had ; but he was well acquainted with its eggs. 



In his son's day the Kite had probably departed from the 

 great woods which clothe the rocky banks of the Eden, near 

 Armathwaite ; because T. C. Heysham wrote to Doubleday, on 

 January 8th, 1833, a letter, in which the accompanying passage 

 occurs : ' As to the Kite, i" have never seen a recent specimen, not- 

 withstanding I am very credibly informed that one was killed a 

 short distance from Carlisle five or six years ago.' At no subse- 

 quent period does the younger Heysham appear to have come 

 across a local specimen of the Kite ; unless, indeed, he may have 

 seen the bird, recorded by Thomas Armstrong, in the seventh 

 volume of the Naturalist, as having been killed near Carlisle, on 

 the 13th of November 1856, a few months before his death. 

 But no doubt he must have known many persons who knew 

 the bird, since I have myself heard the species discussed by 

 other eye-witnesses to its former presence besides Mr. Harris. 

 In January 1890, Mr. Hodgson of Keswick, being then in his 

 96 th year, told me that he well remembered the Kite as breed- 

 ing in the district. When he was a young man you could see 

 a pair (and no more) any day in the neighbourhood of Keswick. 



