HONEY BUZZARD. 
41 
gist” Mr. Wilmot’s own words, communicated in 1844. 
He says, “ A remark made by Mr. Hewitson in his beau¬ 
tiful work on the eggs of British birds, now in the course 
of publication, c that there is no recent instance of the 
Honey Buzzard having bred in this country,’ leads me 
to believe that the following statement may possess suffi¬ 
cient interest for insertion in the c Zoologist.’ 
“ Early in the month of July, 1838, a female Honey 
Buzzard was shot off her nest in Wellgrove-wood, in the 
parish of Bix, near Henley-on-Thames, by a gamekeeper 
of Lord Camoys, named Lowe. The bird, with two eggs 
taken from the nest, passed into the hands of a bird- 
stuffer at Henley, of the name of Hewer. I was then 
resident in the Temple, and being an eager collector of 
the eggs of British Birds, had engaged a young friend, 
Mr. Ralph Mapleton, then living at Henley, to secure for 
me any rare eggs that he might have an opportunity of 
obtaining. Mr. Mapleton communicated to me the above 
occurrence, and at my request purchased the eggs for me. 
The male bird, which continued to haunt the neighbour¬ 
hood of the nest, was not long after killed by another of 
Lord Camoys’ gamekeepers. The nest, a very large one, 
was placed in the fork of a beech tree, and was built of 
sticks of considerable size, with which were intermixed 
twigs with the leaves on. The lining was composed of 
leaves and wool. A great portion of the nest was, I am 
told, remaining in the tree a short time ago.” 
Mr. Wilmot, having ascertained that a pair of Honey 
Buzzards, male and female, had been sent to Birming¬ 
ham to be stuffed, and that they had been procured by Mr. 
Potts, Lord Leigh’s gamekeeper, learned from him that 
he had shot them from an unfinished nest in Waverley 
wood near Stoneleigh Park ; “ that it was built in an 
oak tree, rather a large one, near the middle of the wood, 
