THE SPARROW-HAWK. 
69 
above the ground, in a spruce-fir, — which did not exceed twice 
that height. In Ireland, I have known this bird to build in 
trees only ; but according to Macgillivray, “ in the Outer 
Hebrides, where there are no trees, it builds in rocks.” In Hills- 
borough Park, according to the gamekeeper, it always constructs 
a nest for itself; while the kestrel, on*the contrary, takes posses- 
sion of the old nest of some other bird, as that of the magpie, & c. 
Two nests, reported to me as situated in “ dark fir trees,” as flat, 
and consisting of little materials, were robbed here in the last 
week of May, 1848. They contained four young each, one brood 
being about two, and the other fourteen days out. Birds from 
both nests came under my notice ; they were snow-white in the 
down ; their irides light hazel. At Mount Louise, (Monaghan,) 
“ it builds a rough kind of nest in the fork of a larch or Scotch- 
fir tree, and about twenty feet from the ground. The nest has 
never been met with there in hedge-row timber, nor in a detached 
tree, but always somewhere in the interior of the plantation.” A 
correspondent, writing from the south of Ireland, remarks, that 
he has never known the sparrow-hawk use the nest of another 
bird, but always to build one for itself ; adding, that “ the 
structure is little more artistical than that of the ring-dove, being 
merely a wide and shallow platform of sticks, without any lining, 
except some accidental feathers of the old birds, or their prey.” * 
These facts are mentioned, as, in some places, the sparrow-hawk 
would seem, like the kestrel, to appropriate to itself the old nests 
of other birds. t A friend at Springvale (county of Down), has 
frequently taken the nest of the sparrow-hawk from a tree when 
the young were nearly fledged, and placed it on the ground under 
a basket, in the bottom of which a hole was cut to admit the old 
birds when they came to feed them. The basket was quite ex- 
posed to view, and rat-traps were placed about it, in which, 
though often screened by only a single leaf of the sycamore, the old 
birds were captured ; in snares, too, set around the basket, they 
were often caught. Once, when the female was taken, the male 
* Mr. J. Poole. 
f See Macgillivray’s Hist. Brit. Birds, vol. iii. p, 358-359. 
