Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 4 (1900).djvu/460

426 and one egg; this constant interference causing them to again forsake. In this instance incubation had lasted at least twelve days.— (Clent, Worcestershire).

Cuckoo in the Shetlands.—On Aug. 8th I caught a young fully-fledged Cuckoo (Cuculus canorus) on the lawn in front of this house, where it was feeding. The bird was very tame (perhaps it knew that the Wild Birds Protection Act is in force in Shetland until the end of this month!) I have seen and heard the Cuckoo in and about the shrubbery many times during the past two months.— (Halligarth, Unst, Shetland).

Common Buzzard (Buteo vulgaris) shot in Hertfordshire.—I regret that I have previously omitted to record the shooting of a Common Buzzard in Hertfordshire on Jan. 27th last. It was a male bird, and measured three feet from tip to tip, wing measurement, and turned the scale at two ounces short of two pounds. Mr. Spary, the local taxidermist, remarked to me that the bird was as fat as butter, and had probably been feasting in some rich game-preserves. He told me also that all the Hawks and Owls he had had through his hands were never very fat, and that the case of the Buzzard under notice was a singular exception. I have promised not to divulge the exact locality where the bird was shot, as the keeper is afraid of "marching orders" should it reach the ears of his employer.— (5, Glenferrie Road, St. Albans, Herts).

Nesting Habits of the Sparrow-Hawk.—In treating of an issue in this connection (ante, p. 381), Mr. A.H. Meiklejohn has awakened in me a responsive chord. No bird have I followed and studied more industriously in the breeding season than Accipiter nisus. Perhaps, then, as I aspire to the credit of knowing something about the species in question, a corner may be found for this communication, though I would wish, quite modestly, to say at the outset that Mr. Meiklejohn is mistaken in fancying that attention has never yet been called in print to the particular traits in the Sparrow-Hawk's economy so recently adverted to by him. Some four years ago a monthly publication, 'The Ornithologist' by name, entered on a somewhat precarious and certainly brief existence, and in its pages a very animated discussion was maintained for upwards of six months concerning the nesting economy of the Sparrow-Hawk. I should like to be allowed to reproduce in these columns the gist of what I wrote in the May number of that magazine for 1896, as I have had no reason subsequently to alter or even modify the views then expressed. They were the outcome of many years' assiduous and unrelenting study of Sparrow-Hawks in their woodland haunts during the breeding season, and should go to prove that the habit to which Mr. Meiklejohn specifically refers has not always hitherto been