102 EXTRACTS FROM A LECTURE GIVEN BY WILLIAM LEAN. 
XIV. 
EXTRACTS FROM A LECTURE GIVEN BY 
WILLIAM LEAN IN BIRMINGHAM, 1856. 
(Communicated by Mr. J. Id. Gurney.) 
There is one little incident within my own knowledge, connected 
with the manifestation of instinct in a bird, not in the construction 
of her nest, but apparently in the endeavour to preserve the con- 
tents of her nest from molestation, and which bears so much of the 
character of something nearly akin to reason, that I shall venture 
to nai'rate it. 
This egg of a Kite — of the Falco milvus , — is one of the largest 
and handsomest of our British birds of prey. Some six or seven 
and twenty years ago, a pair or two of these birds, which are by 
no means plentiful, used to frequent and breed every year on the 
Drymma Mountain, which rises over the little town of Neath, in 
South Wales. At that time my brother, Charles Lean, resided 
near Neath Abbey, and knowing that the eggs of the Kite would 
be a prize to me, he determined to endeavour to procure some of 
them. I may mention, as an indication of the rarity of the egg, 
that about twenty years ago, when Hewetson was publishing his 
work on the eggs of British birds, the egg of the Kite was, for a 
considerable time, mentioned in the list which he issued periodically 
of those eggs which he had been unable to procure, and which he 
was consequently unable to figure. 
After a great deal of search one spring, and by means of carefully 
watching a pair of the Kites, my brother at last succeeded in 
discovering their nest. As was to be expected witli such wild 
and wary birds, the nest was built in a spot very difficult of access, 
though, at the same time, the nest itself was very much exposed, and 
could be easily seen, when the spot the birds had chosen had been 
once discovered. The Drymma in some places presents, towards 
