298 BULLETIN 16 7, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



build two or more nests and use them alternately. Joseph R. Slevin 

 (1929) has published an interesting history of seven California pairs, 

 which illustrates the territorial habit. The sparrow hawk and the 

 western kingbird have both been known to nest in the lower parts of 

 golden eagles' nests. 



Some of the older cliff nests are very large, as they last for many 

 years in a secure and sheltered position, until the lower parts are 

 quite thoroughly rotted. Bendire (1892) mentions one that was 7 

 feet high and 6 feet wide. F. C. Willard (1916a) tells of one that 

 was "six feet one way by eight the other. Dried cactus leaves com- 

 prised most of it, but there were some sticks in the base of it." He 

 writes further: "On one occasion I was interested in watching one 

 collecting sticks for its nest. It would alight in the top of a half dead 

 juniper tree, walk clumsily out on a dead branch and break off a stick 

 with its beak. It carried this stick in its beak as far as I could see it, 

 passing close by me enroute to its nest. I watched it make several 

 trips, using a powerful glass to assure myself that it really carried 

 the sticks in its beak and not in its talons. A short time thereafter I 

 watched another eagle carrying dried 'nigger-head' leaves in its 

 talons. It was using them as lining." 



E. S. Cameron (1905) described and studied an eagle's nest in 

 Montana that "was situated near the top of a scoriaceous rock in the 

 badlands, a crimson pillar which crowned a high butte sloping 

 abruptly to deep washouts. The upper part of this column con- 

 sisted of easily detachable pink layers, called laterite by geologists, 

 but scoriae of every color strewed the base which rested on red ochre 

 clay reminiscent of a painter's palette. Placed in a hollow niche of 

 the wall face the eyrie was entirely enclosed and sheltered on three 

 sides by a dome of rock. On the fourth, and open side, the enormous 

 sunken nest greatly overlapped the seemingly inadequate ledge, 

 which served as a support, and thereby secured the safety of the eggs 

 and young." 



A totally different Montana nest was in a tall pine about halfway 

 up a steep hillside. He (1908b) says: 



The eyrie, which cousists of an immense pile of pine sticks, rests upon, and 

 is built around, a number of green boughs, while a dead projecting branch 

 near the center forms n convenient perch for the parent eagles. As would 

 naturally be exi)ected in the present case, the vertical height of the nest 

 greatly exceeds the diameter, and its width is much inferior to the nest upon 

 the rock previously described. Nevertheless, as seen from below, it conveys an 

 impression of strength, which is not belied when it is reached, for a six foot 

 man can sit in it with ease. On Maj 11, the whole external circumference 

 of the nest rim was interwoven with an ornamental binding of green pine tops. 



Roderick MacFarlane (1908) found this eagle breeding nearly up 

 to the Arctic coast ; he writes : "From various points along the valley 



