NORTHERN RED-SHOULDERED HAWK 187 



data on 45 New York nests ; of these, 26 were in beeches, 12 in maples, 

 3 in ashes, 2 in basswoods, and 1 each in an oak and a hemlock. 



I have never found fresh green leavas of deciduous trees or plants 

 in a nest until after the eggs had hatched, but it seems to be a com- 

 moner practice elsewhere. J. Claire Wood (1906) says that a ma- 

 jority of the nests found in Michigan are so decorated after the 

 eggs are advanced in incubation, and that "a nest found in Gen- 

 esee county on April 12, 1903, containing three fresh eggs, pre- 

 sented a beautiful green interior the hollow being lined with 'box- 

 berry' leaves and the surrounding platform concealed beneath a pro- 

 fusion of spruce twigs with their covering of green needles. Not 

 only are the leaves of various trees used but entire plants of such as 

 night shade and violet. Have found the latter so fresh that the 

 adhering flowers had not commenced to droop." 



S. F. Rathbun writes to me that he has found nests lined with "the 

 dry blades from cornstalks and the dried webs of the tent-caterpillar's 

 retreat." He thinks that the green sprigs of hemlock, so often found 

 in nests, are usually picked up from the ground after having been 

 blown off the trees. He has noticed that this material was used freely 

 when windy weather prevailed during the nest building period and 

 was sometimes lacking during very calm seasons. The use of green 

 lining is, in my opinion, for sanitary rather than ornamental 

 purposes. 



Eggs. — The ordinary set of the northern red-shouldered hawk con- 

 sists of three or four eggs; sets of three are much commoner than 

 four, only about one set in three or four consists of four eggs. Sets 

 of five are very rare; I have taken only one and heard of only two 

 others in my home territory. Bendire (1892) records two sets of six. 

 The eggs are the usual hawk shape, ovate to rounded-ovate or oval. 

 The shell is smooth but w^itliout gloss until much worn by incubation. 

 The ground color is dull white or pale bluish white, sometimes clear 

 white when fresh, but often much nest stained. They are perhaps 

 the handsomest of the eggs of the Buteos and show an almost endless 

 variety of types and colors of markings. Some are boldly and irregu- 

 larly marked with great blotches of "warm sepia", "bay", "chestnut", 

 "auburn", "amber brown", "tawny", "russet", or "ochraceous-tawny" ; 

 fcometimes two or three shades of light and dark browns appear on 

 the same ^gg\ some are spotted or blotched with various shades of 

 "purple-drab" or "ecru-drab", with or without overlying spots of 

 the different browns; sometimes any of these colors are splashed 

 longitudinally at one end. Some eggs are more evenly covered with 

 small spots or fine dots of any of the above colors. Some are very 

 sparingly marked, but wholly immaculate eggs are very rare. The 

 measurements of 50 eggs in the United States National Museum 



