EASTERN GOSHAWK 127 



perhaps longer. J. A. Farley (1923) visited this nest on April 28, 

 1923, and thus describes it: 



The nest was of enormous size but wholly new and hence free from woods 

 dirt. It was over 5 feet in length, 2 feet in breadth and 1 foot in depth. It 

 was very compactly made of sticks (mostly white pine and hemlock), many 

 of them long and large ; and it had a coniferous bark floor in its very slightly 

 hollowed interior. Quite a number of the longer and slimmer branches had 

 green pine-needle bunches, but they were worked into the body of the nest, 

 showing that they could not have been added recently. The fresh fractures 

 of many sticks showed that the Hawk had broken them from living trees. 

 It was the most beautifully constructed large Hawk's nest that I have ever 

 seen. The nest was placed on horizontal limbs and against the trunk of a 

 white pine of almost 2 feet diameter. It was up 55 feet — two thirds the 

 height of the tree. 



More recent information comes to me from Albert A. Cross, who 

 found a nest containing four eggs near Huntington, Mass., on April 

 19, 1931. He has sent me an excellent photograph of the nest (pi. 

 40) and some very full notes on it, from which I quote as follows : 



The nest was in a sugar maple in a hemlock clump of considerable area 

 and, roughly measured at the time, was placed at between 40 and 50 feet from 

 the ground; however, afterward a more accurate measurement was made and 

 the height was found to be in excess of 50 feet. The nest itself was a huge 

 affair placed against the body of the tree and measured 3 by 4 feet across 

 the top and 35 inches in height. Fresh hemlock spiUs had been added to 

 the interior, but most of the needles had fallen from these, owing to the fact 

 that fair weather had prevailed since April 7. Besides the hemlock spills there 

 was also a considerable quantity of hemlock bark with which the nest was 

 partially lined. The nest was weU feathered. 



Scattering hardwoods grew among the hemlocks, as beech, yellow birch, 

 and sugar maple. The feathers of groiise were littered promiscuously through 

 the wootls, indicating the activities of the hawks; excrement indicated their 

 favorite percliing trees. While we were there the goshawks were flying about 

 like bats, perching in trees or soaring about overhead and keeping up an 

 incessant din with hardly a break in their calls. 



In the days when passenger pigeons were abundant in Pennsyl- 

 vania goshawks bred there regularly and commonly. But now this 

 hawk is comparatively rare and breeds only in some of the moun- 

 tainous counties, where it can find extensive forests of mixed conifers 

 and hardwoods. R. B. Simpson (1909a) found a nest that year 

 near Warren, Pa., in a region "heavily timbered with immense pines 

 and hemlocks, and a good sprinkling of beech." The nest was 60 

 feet up in a white pine; it was lined with "leaves and a few fresh 

 hemlock sprigs." He took three eggs from this nest on April 2, 

 and on April 20 found the hawk incubating on a second set of eggs 

 in an old red-tailed hawk's nest in the vicinity. These eggs were 

 destroyed later, possibly by a crow ; but on May 20 he found that the 

 goshawk had laid a third set of two eggs in another old redtail's 

 nest nearby, "high up in a big oak" ; this set was allowed to hatch. 



