Page:The New Forest - its history and its scenery.djvu/283

Rh sits on the eggs, the cock perches close by in some tall thick tree. Perhaps from this very affection for their young arises their seeming stupidity, and the ease with which they are killed. Some years ago a keeper found a nest with two young birds in Bentley Wood, and on purpose to secure them tied them by their legs to a small tree, where the old birds regularly came and fed them. But the strangest fact with regard to their breeding is that before they finally decide upon a nest they will line several with green leaves and small leafy twigs. Lastly, I may add that though I have examined many nests, I have never found any traces of their being, as is related by some writers, lined with wool. If there was any wool it was probably placed there by the bird which had previously inhabited the nest.

The common buzzard (Falco buteo) is a resident all through the year in the Forest, and may now and then be seen towering high up in the air, so high that you would not at first notice him, unless you heard his wild scream. It is not, however, nearly so plentiful as formerly. He is a sad coward, and the common crow will not only attack, but defeat him. Once or twice I have seen their battles during the breeding season. The jays, and magpies, too, and even the pewits, will mob him, the latter striking at him almost like a falcon. Its favourite breeding-places are in the Denny and Bratley Woods, Sloden, Birchen Hat, Mark Ash, and Prior's Acre. Several nests are yearly taken, for the bird generally breeds when the bark-strippers are at work in April and May. A series of its eggs, in my collection, taken in the Forest, show every variety of colouring from nearly pure white to richly blotched specimens.

In the breeding-season the birds are excessively destructive. A boy who climbed up to a nest in the spring of 1860 told me that he found no less than two young rabbits, a grey 265