FALCONID^E. TANDION C AR OLINEN SIS. 55 



externally of large sticks, from a half-inch to an inch and a half in circumference, 

 and frequently three feet in length. These are often piled to the height of five feet, 

 Avith a diameter of three. In a nest described by Wilson, he found, intermixed 

 with a mass of sticks, corn-stalks, sea-weed, wet turf, mullein-stalks, &c. ; the whole 

 lined with dry sea-grass (Zostera marina}. All together, he adds, it formed a mass 

 observable to the distance of half a mile. It was large enough to fill a cart and be 

 no inconsiderable load for a horse. Xone of the nests which I have observed in 

 New England bear any proportion in size to this. They are not usually more than 

 two feet in their greatest depth. 



When the nest of this Hawk is visited, the male bird will frequently make violent, 

 and sometimes dangerous, attacks upon the intruder. In one instance, related to me 

 by a physician in Maine, the talons of one of these Hawks penetrated through a 

 thick cloth cap, and laid bare the scalp of a lad who had climbed to its nest, very 

 nearly hurling him to the ground. A correspondent quoted by Wilson narrates a 

 nearly similar instance of courageous and desperate defence of its young. The Fish- 

 Hawks are also very devoted in their attentions to their mates, and supply them 

 with food while on the nest. W'ilson relates a touching instance of this devotion, 

 where a female who had lost one leg, and was unable to fish for herself, was so abun- 

 dantly supplied by her mate, that she rarely had occasion to leave her nest, and never 

 for food. 



The Fish-Hawk usually nests in large communities. Even three hundred pairs 

 have been observed nesting in this manner on one small island. When a new nest 

 is to be constructed, the \vhole community has been known to take part in its com- 

 pletion, and the work is soon finished. These Hawks are also remarkably tolerant 

 towards smaller birds, and permit the Purple Grakle (Quiscalus purpureus) to con- 

 struct their nests in the interstices of their own. Wilson observed no less than 

 four of these nests thus clustered in a single Fish-Hawk's nest, with a fifth on an 

 adjoining branch. 



The eggs of the Fish-Hawk are usiially three in number, often only two, and 

 more rarely four. They are subject to great variations as to their ground color, the 

 number, shade, and distribution of the blotches of secondary coloring with which 

 they are marked, and also as to their size and shape. Their ground color is most 

 frequently a creamy white, with a very perceptible tinge of red. This varies, how- 

 ever, from an almost pure shade of cream, without any admixture, to so deep a 

 shade of red that white ceases to be noticeable. The specimens represented in the 

 plate correspond with the more usual varieties of the eggs. In the others, which 

 are only verbally described, this variation of the ground color is quite marked, and 

 nearly all the usual shades of brown appear that are observable in their secondary 

 markings. In one instance these markings are of a dark umber-brown, in another 

 of a light claret-brown ; in a third there is an intimate mingling of both shades, as 

 also in the fourth, but with a different distribution, and also with an intermixture 

 of purplish-brown. The eggs represented in the plate (Plate III, figs. 33 and 34) 

 vary from 2 T 9 inches to 2 T 3 ^ in length, and from 1-i-jj- inches to 1-J--J- in breadth. 



It would be impossible, even if it were desirable, to represent all of the endless 



