SOUTHERN BALD EAGLE 323 



mangroves, and the nests were in the main crotches of these trees at 

 heights ranging from 30 to 40 feet ; they were the usual large nests, 5 

 or 6 feet in height and about the same in diameter; one that I 

 examined was lined with straw and grasses. 



An interesting nest that I climbed to on November 26, 1911, near 

 Mount Pleasant, S. C, was 45 feet up among the main branches of 

 a longleaf pine ; it was made of large pine sticks, cornstalks, sedges, 

 and grasses and was deeply lined in the center, up to the level top, 

 with soft grasses, Spanish moss, and feathers. No eggs were visible, 

 but I found them deeply buried under fully 2 inches of the soft 

 lining, completely concealed ; the eggs had evidently been covered by 

 the eagle when she left the nest. 



J. R. Pemberton showed me a picturesque nest on Catalina Island, 

 Calif., on February 22, 1929. The north end of the island terminates 

 in a long, narrow cape, with steep, sloping sides leading up to a 

 knife-edged, rocky ridge, 400 to 500 feet above the sea. On the top 

 of a pinnacle of rock on the crest of this ridge was the eagle's nest. 

 It was a laborious, but not a dangerous, climb to reach it, but it was 

 well worth while. It was a shallow nest on the flat summit of the 

 rock, about 6 feet long by 3 feet wide; it was made of dead sticks 

 from the bushes that grew on the lower slopes and was profusely 

 lined with grasses and decorated with a little white down (pi. 90), 

 We found another old nest on San Nicholas Island, a great pile of 

 sticks, 8 to 10 feet high, on a little shelf on an overhanging cliff. 



These eagles are still fairly common on some of the other Santa 

 Barbara Islands, nesting on rocky cliffs. W. Leon Dawson (1923) 

 writes : 



The nest, which is an immense pile of sticks, lined with fine twigs and grass, 

 and other soft substances, is usually placed on some lesser promontory or a 

 sharp, inaccessible ridge near the ocean. The historic pile figured on page 

 1713 measured twelve feet by six on top, the larger diameter being along the 

 crest of the ridge ; and contained no less than two wagonloads of accumulated 

 materials. Another, from which the M. C. O. took two heavily incubated eggs 

 on the 20th of March, 1919, was built up on a slanting ridge, so that the lower 

 or seaward face was fourteen feet in depth, although the top of the nest was 

 only four feet by six. 



There are probably more bald eagles nesting in Florida than in 

 any other State in the United States, and they are quite thickly con- 

 centrated in certain favorable localities. Donald J. Nicholson, who 

 has had many years of experience with them, has sent me some vo- 

 luminous notes on these birds, Pinellas County on the west coast 

 and Brevard County on the east coast seem to be the centers of abun- 

 dance. Mr. Nicholson mentions an area 31^ miles long and three- 

 fourths of a mile wide, in which were seven occupied nests, three of 

 them within a 1-mile circle, in Brevard County, The nesting sea- 



