260 BULLETIN 16 7, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



The nest was about 35 feet up in the topmost crotch of one of the 

 larger mesquites, which stood out by itself in one of the large open 

 spaces (pi. 71). It was built on the top of a large bunch of mistletoe 

 and was made of rather large sticks and pieces of mistletoe, lined 

 with fine green leaves, grass, and a piece of string. It was a shallow 

 nest, measuring over 20 inches in outside and about 10 inches in 

 inside diameter. It contained two typical eggs. 



Dr. Edgar A. Mearns (1886) was the first to record the nesting of 

 the Mexican black hawk within our borders. On June 19, 1885, he 

 found a nest on Fossil Creek, 30 miles east of Fort Verde, Ariz. He 

 says : "The nest was built in a cottonwood tree in the same grove in 

 which we first found the birds. The nest had evidently been the 

 birthplace of many generations of these Hawks, for it measured four 

 feet in depth by two feet in width. It was lined with a layer of 

 cottonwood leaves several inches deep, was very slightly concave, and 

 composed of large sticks, much decayed below, showing that they 

 had been in position for a number of years. The nest was about 

 thirty feet from the ground. The female parent remained too shy 

 to return to the nest until I began to climb the tree." 



Major Bendire (1892) describes a Texas nest as follows: "Mr. 

 D. B. Burrows writes me that he found a nest of this species in Starr 

 County, Texas, on A})ril 25, 1891, containing a single egg. The 

 female was shot from the nest, and dissection showed that no more 

 eggs would have been laid. The nest, a newly constructed one, was 

 placed in a dense willow grove in the main forks of a tree of this 

 species, about 30 feet above the ground, and growing about 80 yards 

 from the banks of the Rio Grande. It was about 15 inches wide by 

 8 inches deep and rather shallow. It was composed of dry twigs and 

 was well lined with green willow leaves." 



F. H. Fowler (1903) says: "At the Natural Bridge near Fort 

 Verde, I saw several nests of this bird in 1893, some of which were 

 old, but several new and containing young. One or two were in cups 

 in the rock of the bridge; the others in giant sycamores; that grew 

 in the narrow canyon." 



G, B. Thomas (1908), who has had considerable experience with 

 this hawk in British Honduras and has examined some 27 nests, says: 

 "The nest itself is a huge platform of sticks often measuring four 

 feet across and two feet in depth, sometimes deeply and other times 

 only slightly cupped, lined with pieces of green leaves and green pine 

 needles. Their location I always found was in a pine tree, the 

 distance from the ground varying from fifteen to fifty or sixty feet. 

 More often, however, they were between twenty and thirty feet up, 

 in small pines." 



Eggs. — The Mexican black hawk lays from one to three eggs, 

 oftener two or one. Of 13 sets of which I have the records, from 



