138 MERLIN 
From the information at present to hand it would seem 
as if its breeding here was a thing of rare and indeed 
casual occurrence, but this may be from lack of observation 
of the somewhat extensive moorland of the island at the 
right season, for the species is usually very constant in its 
choice of a site. . 
Mr. F. 8S. Graves was told that some forty years ago a 
small blue Hawk ‘no bigger than a Wood Thrush’ nested 
among the ling at the edge of the brows of Gordon 
(Patrick); it may have been the same pair which, as the 
late Mr. Corrin told Mr. Kermode, nested at Contrary 
Head, near by. Dr. Crellin, writing in 1862, told Mr. 
More that he had no doubt that the bird bred in Man; 
he had been told of a pair of blue-coloured Hawks, which 
bred annually in a neighbourhood not named, and whose 
eggs his informant had in that year (1862) destroyed. He 
failed to get more exact information. 
In 1893 Mr. F. Nicholson heard from a resident in the 
higher part of Onchan that hawks nested in the heather on 
the ‘ Parks’ between Honeyhill and Glen Roy, and that he 
had that year seen a nest. 
Mr. M. M‘Whannell states that he has found eggs near 
the Point of Ayre, where Mr, Cruickshank (according to 
Mr. Kermode) thinks he has also met with it breeding. 
Mr. Kermode had a young one, caught on the Mooragh at 
Ramsey, 13th August 1888, but he does not say whether he 
considered that it had been hatched in the island. He 
mentions also that an adult female came down a farmhouse 
chimney near Ramsey in pursuit of a Lark on Ist May 
1880, though at the time a fire was burning in the 
erate. 
Mr. T. Fargher tells me that in 1899 two young were 
captured in the heather on Slieu Ruy, above Agneash. 
Mr. J. J. Gill reported to Mr. Kermode a nest found amid 
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