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BIRDS OF LEICESTERSHIRE AND RUTLAND. 
soaring over liis grounds, but at too great a distance to distinguish the species. 
The late INlr. Widdowson reported one taken at Stapleford Pai’k, but I have no 
date, nor particulars, and so cannot vouch for its accuracy. 
GOF-HAWK. Astur palumbaruis (Linnaeus). 
Probably extinct in the counties. — Harley wrote: — “As regards the distri- 
bution of the Gos-Hawk in lieicestershire, I may remark that it used to occur not 
unfrequently in our woodlands and forest wilds, but of late years it has become 
exceeding rare. I have known it to be captured at Oakley, and the woods at 
Gopsal, by both trap and gun,'’ and further added that he had seen one, shot 
in Oakley Wood by a gamekeeper named Monk. In the ‘ ^Midland Naturalist,’ 
1882, p. 62, ]Mr. IMacaulay writes: — “ One was seen in Allexton Wood in 1881 
but his informant, IMr. Davenport, replying to my enquiries, stated that this was 
a misconception of a verbal communication, and that, so far as he could recollect, 
“ the taxidermist at Billesdon (Potter by name) had in his shop, for six or seven 
years (if not more), a bird shot at Allexton by a IMr. Brewster, who once lived at 
Allexton Hall ; this bird was said to be a Gos-Hawk.” Potter, on being written 
to, confirmed this, but having since then seen him, he informed me that the 
gentleman was in America. I am still in doubt whether a large female Sparrow- 
Hawk has not done duty in this, as in many similar cases, for the Gos-Hawk. 
SPARROW-HAWK. Accipiter nisus (Linnaeus). 
Resident, and generally distributed. — Twice I have seen this bold Hawk dash 
over the IMuseum Square ; the last time, in the spring of 1887, so low as to sliew 
the barred chest quite plainly. Just topping the houses, it flew over the town. 
On the 30th Sept., 1887, when I was out shooting, one of these birds dashed close 
by me like a flash of lightning, and stooped into a large flock of various Finches 
feeding on the stubbles, and, before I could think what it was, had sailed away 
upwards with a little victim in its claws. Such a commotion in a second was 
never seen ! A thousand or more small birds scurrying with shrieks of alarm in 
all directions, leaving a few of the bolder spirits to aimlessl}" and futilely follow 
the pirate into the regions of air. I purchased, for the Jluseum, two specimens 
(a male and female) procured at Cropston, and another (an adult male) shot 
near Ansty on 9th Dec., 1885, whilst attempting to strike the decoy Linnet 
of a birdcatcher. 
This species breeds so near to the town of Leicester as Knighton, from whence 
1 procured a nest and five eggs in July, 1883. Mr. Davenport, who found a 
.Sparrow-Hawk nesting in Skeffington Wood in Jlarch, 1884, wrote: — “She laid 
her first egg on April 30th, and continued laying in the same nest, by fits and 
starts, until the first week in June, making fourteen eggs in all from this nest ! 
This bird laid forty-five eggs in five years : fourteen in 1879, four in 1880, nine in 
1881, four in 1882 (in 1883 I was in Cornwall), and fourteen in 1884. All the 
