Page:Bird Life Throughout the Year (Salter, 1913).djvu/154

112 for a rapid flight as they swerve and circle, at times mounting to a great height. If late in the month, the two or three large roundish eggs, slightly clouded and zoned with red, have probably given place to young birds in greyish down. Fierce as young eaglets, they will strike at the hand of the intruder, in fact, the first hatched, and consequently the strongest of the brood, not infrequently pecks and worries his nest fellows to death. Round the edge of the nest is strewn the provision for this hopeful family, a field-mouse, the remains of a mole and portions of a dead lamb. The harmlessness of the buzzard is now so generally recognised that most landowners have given their gamekeepers orders not to molest it, and to all appearance its presence may long add an item of beauty and interest to the rocky dales of the north and west.

May1st.—Golden Plover nests. Whimbrel arrives. 2nd.—Reed Bunting nests. Common Gull last seen. Swift arrives. 3rd.—Mistle Thrush nests for the second time. 4th.—Tree Creeper nests. Young Ravens leave the nest. Garden Warbler arrives.