The Natural History of Ireland/Volume 1/The Honey Buzzard
THE HONEY BUZZARD.
- Pernis apivorus, Linn, (sp.)
- Falco
Is a very rare summer visitant.
On the 11th of June, 1833, a fine male specimen of the Honey Buzzard, unrecorded as having before occurred in Ireland, was shot by Robert G. Bomford, Esq., in his demesne of Annadale, near Belfast. This gentleman, on being informed of the rarity of the bird, kindly presented it to the Belfast Museum. A similar bird, most probably the female, accompanied the one that was shot. I saw the specimen when recent, and found the bill and forehead covered with cow-dung in such a manner, as to lead to the supposition that the bird had been searching for insects in that substance. On examination of the stomach, which was quite full, it was found to contain a few of the larva?, and some fragments of perfect coleopterous insects, several whitish-coloured hairy caterpillars, the pupae of a butterfly, and also of the the six-spot burnet-moth (Zygcena filipendulae), together with some pieces of grass, which it is presumed were taken with the last-named insect, it being on the stalks of grass that the pupae of this species of Zygaena are chiefly found. This insectivorous food must have been a matter of choice to the honey buzzard, the bird being in the full vigour of its powers, and the district in which it was killed abounding with such birds, as, were they its natural or wished-for prey, it might have easily captured and destroyed.
The individual thus dwelt upon, and of which a notice appeared in the Magazine of Natural History for 1833, vol. vi. p. 447, was a mature male. The bands on the tail exhibited a greater inequality than is represented in any figure I have seen, the first and second being less than an inch apart ; the third, more than two inches and a half distant from the second band.
In the summer of 1838, a honey buzzard, shot in the grounds about Kilruddery House, in the county of Wicklow, the seat of the Earl of Meath, came into the possession of T. W. Warren, Esq. of Dublin. A second individual was in company with it, and remained about the place for weeks after its supposed partner's death. This species has occasionally bred in England. On the 7th of June, 1839, an adult male was shot on the county of Antrim strand of Belfast bay, and purchased by Richard Langtry, Esq. The food in its stomach consisted of coleopterous insects only. A specimen of the honey buzzard was sent in a recent state from Gorey, county of Wexford, in the summer or autumn of 1841, to Mr. Glennon, bird-preserver, Dublin. *
- Mr. Selby, in the Berwickshire Club Report for 1836, p. 109, gives a very interesting account of one of these birds, which was
observed and trapped in his demesne at Twizel, Northumberland.