Page:The Natural History of Ireland vol1.djvu/93

 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.f 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.