THE NEW SPORT OF "HAWKING" 279 



Somehow, though, it is by no means as easy as it looks to 

 obtain a large, sharp, first-class picture. 



The aforesaid Bald Eagles are much harder subjects for the 

 camera. Their nests are huge, and usually high in monster 

 trees, and the owners are always difficult of approach. They 

 nest very early in the season, in Florida even the year before, 

 one might say, — about December, — so that I have always 

 come too late even to find young. 



Coming now to our late breeders, the Broad-winged Hawk 

 is about the same size as the Cooper's, but in form, habit, and 

 movements is very much like the Red-shouldered. Some- 

 times it soars about uttering a peculiar shrill whistle, which 

 a German friend of mine, who was a great hawk-hunter, 

 and had a pair of these hawks on his farm, thought was 

 a " grieved note," as he called it, of the female Red-shoulder, 

 deprived of her eggs. But presently his birds quieted down, 

 and, selecting an old nest in a pine grove near by, soon after 

 the middle of May rejoiced in the prospects aftorded by two 

 smallish brown and lilac spotted eggs. 



Two eggs is the usual number at one laying, though I have 

 found three. And though May twentieth is the standard 

 date for the full set, it is sometimes earlier, for I once found 

 a nest in a low pine on May fourth with one egg, and the 

 set of two, which I examined on the ninth, had probably 

 been completed by the sixth. This same pair the next sea- 

 son made a nest in a pine a few yards away, only nineteen 

 feet from the ground, in which were three eggs. When dis- 

 turbed, the female gently flapped off a couple of gunshots, 

 and, alighting in a tree, motionless and silent, awaited the 

 departure of the intruder. 



Another nest of Broad-wings which I found was in a most 

 picturesque spot, in Kent, Connecticut. A large mountain 

 brook leaps forty feet over a precipice in some dark hemlock 



