Clarke : Notes on the Buzzard (Buteo vulgaris). 51 



May 8th : I am tempted to make a divergence from my subject, 

 and to give the following interesting note on the nesting of the tawny 

 owl. Acting on information I had received last evening, I visited a 

 certain barn, the hay in which reaches to within a yard of the roof, 

 and on the top I find three eggs of the tawny owl placed on a slight 

 depression, and immediately opposite a narrow opening in the wall. 

 The eggs had been forsaken some weeks owing to a curious misfortune 

 having happened to the old bird, which somehow managed to find its 

 way down a chimney into an unoccupied bedroom, where it was found 

 almost starved to death, perched upon a chest of drawers. 



In the evening we obtained information of another buzzard's nest, 

 and after a hasty tea set out. The climb being much more stiff than 

 before, it is dusk when we reach the site, which is excessively wild 

 and exposed, being the face of crag at the summit of a pike 2000ft. 

 high, and overlooks a desolate rocky valley whose almost perpen- 

 dicular sides are strewn with detached rocks. The nest is easy to get 

 at from above, but unfortunately the rope is left behind. The old 

 bird is very reluctant to leave, although we shout and make a great 

 noise, and it is some minutes before she is scared. To my friend and 

 myself this nest is quite inaccessible ; it is, however, reached by our 

 guide in masterly style but at the greatest possible risk. The eggs 

 are two in number like the others, but more liberally dashed with 

 red brown. It is quite dark long before we reach the inn. 



May 12th. After climbing one of the wildest passes in England, 

 and crossing an uninhabited narrow valley in which lies a secluded 

 lake, we ascend the opposite mountain and recline to take a little 

 rest, and look back upon the wild valley and mountains. Before us 

 is a celebrated mountain from whose inaccessible sides a buzzard flies ; 

 at first she wings her way with heavy flight, performed by slow 

 deliberate flaps of her broad and powerful wings, she pauses, almost 

 coming to a standstill, and then wheeling, commences to rise by the 

 most graceful and easy gyrations, performed apparently without the 

 slightest effort. Higher and higher the bird rises, until at last she 

 becomes a mere speck in the clouds, and the elevation reached can- 

 not be less than 6000ft. It is the triumph of the wing, and we 

 watch her long, leaving reluctantly to resume our way. 



May 13th : We are favoured by a sight which is now-a-days a 

 very rare one in England — a pair of ravens pursuing a buzzard. 

 The ravens, with bills upturned like bayonets and with vigorously 

 flapping wings, are making vain endeavours to reach the hawk, which, 

 as though to tantalise, keeps just above them, rising in very small 



