Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 4 (1900).djvu/133

Rh influence of a warm day, began a rather feeble duet, accompanied by an up and down movement of the neck, but sufficient to prove them not speechless.

9th.—A Pied Chaffinch at Northrepps.

10th.—Four Pied Flycatchers in Mr. Pashley's garden.

11th.—A Marsh-Harrier's nest † quite ready for eggs, but not containing any, found about two miles from the sea by a naturalist who saw the female rise and quit it at twenty yards, there being four other Harriers on the wing at the same time, a sight not often enjoyed in England nowadays. Unfortunately the two old Harriers brought themselves under the gamekeeper's fatal ban by killing some leverets, and their identity, which had been questioned, was only too well established shortly afterwards, as this obnoxious individual trapped them both. The cock was quite the finest old male that has been seen in Norfolk for many a year, with grey wing-coverts, and a light tail and crown. The Marsh-Harrier's nest was nine inches in diameter and raised fourteen from the ground, but, as Mr. Bird remarked, as the rushes grew the nest would naturally continue to rise a little with them. It was composed of pieces of the "gladden" which grows all round (Carex or Juncus), and a few dead hemlock stems from the marsh wall, with one large bramble, and a bit of rotten wood the thickness of a man's finger. A few yards off lay the remains of a small leveret, the fatal appetite for which had brought down the keeper's wrath. The marsh is what would be called here a dry marsh, of large extent, a capital place at this time of the year for Swallow-tailed Butterflies and Cuckoos, one of which birds was seen by the marshman with an egg in its mouth or else a young bird. Of this nest Mr. Kearton obtained a good photograph, which is excellently reproduced in 'Our Rarer British Breeding Birds.' It is supposed to be twenty years since any Marsh Harriers have been hatched off in Norfolk, the last attempt, known to Mr. Bird, prior to this, being in 1894, when two eggs are believed to have been laid and two Bantam's eggs substituted for them, on which Mr. Bird ascertained the old female Harrier sat. Probably she shared the usual fate of all "Hawks" in a game-preserving county long before she had time to find out the ruse which was practised upon her. Mr. Stevenson considered that the Marsh