178 
THE BIRDS OF HAMPSHIRE. 
are well out in leaf, and departs before the fall ; and as 
it frequents the wooded parts of the county it more easily 
escapes notice during the summer. 
In the Isle of Wight it has not been found nesting, 
and such rare occurrences as have been noted there have 
usually been in the autumn, whence it may be inferred that 
it only visits the island on migration. 
On another page we have given our reasons for 
believing that the nest described by Gilbert White (in 
his forty-third Letter to Pennant), as that of a sparrow- 
hawk, really belonged to a bird of this species. 
Colonel Irby, writing to Kelsall in 1889, said the hobby 
nested every year on the east side of the county. 
Mr. Armistead in the "Zoologist" (February, 1898) 
relates that a pair nested and hatched their young in a 
magpie's nest, near Stockbridge, " many years ago," one 
of the young birds being taken and reared, and kept as 
a pet for many years. 
On June 2nd, 1884, four eggs were taken from a 
nest in a beech tree on the road half way between Andover 
and Winchester; in 1885 a nest with three eggs was found 
at Botley ; in 1 890 three young ones, just out of the nest, 
were shot in Doles Wood, near Andover, and on May 27th, 
1892, a female was shot on her nest in the same wood 
and her eggs broken beneath her. 
Munn found a pair nesting in an old nest in an oak tree 
in a wood near North Oakley in 1894, and on June 12th, 
there were three eggs ; he watched the pair of old birds for 
some time in the vicinity of the nest. In the following 
year the pair were nesting in an adjoining wood, and again 
three eggs were found in an old nest in an oak on 
June 17th. 
Three young ones were taken from a crow's nest near 
