SWALLOW-TAILED KITE 47 



woods in the afternoon. The nest is usually built on the foundation of an old 

 one of a previous year. The female does not alight to secure nesting materials, 

 but snatches them while in full flight. Once, while standing in a larch swamp, 

 a Kite dashed by me and took up a small twig, heavily draped with usnca, and 

 proudly soared out over the woods with it. 



Colonel Goss (1891) watched a pair building a nest in the top 

 of a large hickory tree, and says: "When either came to the nest 

 alone with a stick, it would place it hurriedly upon the nest, but 

 when both met at the nest they would at once commence fussing 

 about, pulling at the sticks and trying to arrange the material, first 

 one getting upon the nest and then the other, turning around as if 

 trying to fit a place for the bodies. I think at one time they must 

 have worked at least ten minutes trying to weave in or place in a 

 satisfactory manner a stripping from the inner bark of the cotton- 

 wood. As builders they are not a success." 



In Texas these kites sometimes nest in tall pines, but oftener in 

 the tops of the largest and loftiest deciduous trees, such as cotton- 

 woods, elms, sycamores, pin oaks, cypresses, or pecans, along the 

 banks of streams or in the river bottoms. The nests are often 100 to 

 150 feet above the ground, seldom less than 60, and placed among 

 the slender topmost branches, concealed in the thick foliage; oc- 

 casionally a nest is placed far out on a horizontal limb. 



G. B. Benners (1889) mentions a nest that was over 200 feet 

 from the ground in a giant cottonwood. He describes another nest 

 as follows: 



It is about one foot wide by two feet long, and four inches deep (or high), 

 perfectly flat on top, with just the least depression in the middle to hold the 

 eggs. Composed of a harsh green moss with a little Spanish moss among it, 

 and with a mass of small twigs mixed in among the moss. These twigs must 

 have the moss growiug on them, for I saw several Kites carrying twigs with 

 moss hanging from them, during our trip. The nest is just a platform, and 

 what keeps the eggs from rolling out during the high wind, when the bird is not 

 on, I cannot see. All the other nests we saw were of the same description, 

 with the exception of one, which was composed wholly of Spanish moss. As 

 the trees were all covered with this moss it was very hard indeed to see the 

 nests. 



J. W. Preston (1886) records the nesting of this kite in the wilder- 

 ness of Becker County, Minn., and says of the locality : "Somewhere 

 back from the shores of one of these lakes, where the rich flat land 

 had sent up a heavy growth of basswood, elm and balsam, and the 

 higher ground was covered with poplar, sugar tree and birch, a 

 pair of Swallow-tailed Kites {Elanoides forficatus) had chosen a 

 nesting place." The nest was finally found, after much watching, 

 in the extreme top of a tall white birch, "whose greatest diameter 

 was less than twelve inches, with scarcely a dozen branches, and 



