77 
THE HONEY BUZZARD. 
Pernis apivorus, Linn, (sp.) 
Falco „ „ 
Is a very rare summer visitant. 
On the 11th of June, 1833, a fine male specimen of the Honey 
Buzzard, unrecorded as having before occurred in Ireland, was 
shot by Robert G. Bomford, Esq., in his demesne of Annadale, 
near Belfast. This gentleman, on being informed of the rarity of 
the bird, kindly presented it to the Belfast Museum. A similar 
bird, most probably the female, accompanied the one that was 
shot. I saw the specimen when recent, and found the bill and 
forehead covered with cow-dung in such a manner, as to lead to the 
supposition that the bird had been searching for insects in that sub- 
stance. On examination of the stomach, which was quite full, it was 
found to contain a few of the larvse, and some fragments of perfect 
coleopterous insects, several whitish-coloured hairy caterpillars, the 
pupae of a butterfly, and also of the the six-spot burnet-moth 
(Zygona filipendula), together with some pieces of grass, which 
it is presumed were taken with the last-named insect, it being on 
the stalks of grass that the pupae of this species of Zygoma are 
chiefly found. This insectivorous food must have been a matter 
of choice to the honey buzzard, the bird being in the full vigour 
of its powers, and the district in which it was killed abounding 
with such birds, as, were they its natural or wished-for prey, it 
might have easily captured and destroyed. 
The individual thus dwelt upon, and of which a notice appeared 
in the Magazine of Natural History for 1833, vol. vi. p. 447, 
was a mature male. The bands on the tail exhibited a greater 
inequality than is represented in any figure I have seen, the first 
and second being less than an inch apart ; the third, more than 
two inches and a half distant from the second band. 
In the summer of 1838, a honey buzzard, shot in the grounds 
about Kilruddery House, in the county of Wicklow, the seat of 
the Earl of Meath, came into the possession of T. W. Warren, 
Esq. of Dublin. A second individual was in company with it. 
