AMERICAN ROUGH-LEGGED HAWK 271 



Lucien M. Turner in his unpublished notes made early in the 

 eighties in Labrador and Ungava says : 



The rough-legged hawk is one of the most abundant of the birds of prey in 

 Labrador and Ungava. It arrives about the last week in May at Fort Chimo 

 and remains until the first week in October. Immediately on ils arrival a 

 locality is selected for a nest, as mating has evidently occurred before it appears 

 in the vicinity of Fort Chimo ; often the same place is resorted to where the 

 same pair have reared their young for many seasons. 



All the nests discovered by me were invariably placed on a ledge or projection 

 of a high bluff. Strangely enough, should there be several ledges, apparently 

 suitable in all respects, on the same bluff, the one nearest the top is selected. 

 I suspected this to be done in order to allow the birds to have a greater view 

 of the surrounding country for purposes of searching for food or to look for 

 danger. 



The nest is composed of sticks of various sizes together with a few grass or 

 weed stalks placed irregularly crosswise. The particular location of the nest 

 modifies the amount of nest material. A flat rock usually has but sufficient of 

 these ma'.erials to prevent the eggs from rolling about. Where the place slopes, 

 the nest is usually higher in front, often with nothing at the rear except the 

 side of the cliff. In locations where the nest has been used for several years 

 the amount of material accumulated is astonishingly large. Some nests are 

 increased considerably each year, and other nests appear to have been only 

 rearranged. The depression containing the eggs is quite shallow, and, in some 

 instances, nearly flat. 



The accumulations around the nest, such as refuse of food, is also surprising 

 in quantity and, decomposing, forms a soil in which grow most luxuriantly 

 grasses and oilier plants, thus marking the spot that might otherwise have been 

 overlooked. 



Alfred M. Bailey (1926) describes a nest on a cliff in Alaska that 

 consisted of "a jumble of sticks cemented together by excrement.'' 

 Roderick MacFarlane (1908) relates that 70 nests of this species were 

 found in the Anderson River region. "About fifty-five of them were 

 built in the crotches of the tallest trees, not far from the top, and at 

 a height of from twenty to thirty feet from the ground. They were 

 composed of small sticks and twigs, and comfortably lined with hay, 

 moss, down and feathers. The remaining hfieen were placed near 

 the edge of steep cliifs of shelving rocic, or on the face of deep 

 ravines and other declivitous river banks, and in make they were 

 somewhat similar to the foregoing." 



W. G. Sheldon (1912) relates of the closely allied European form, 

 B. lagopus lagopus^ that the nests he found in Lapland contained in 

 the grass lining "fresh green slioots of pine and V accinlumP Abel 

 Chapman (1885) found a nest in Lapland on June 5 which was "a 

 mass of dead sticks about two feet thick, with a layer of solid ice 

 about six inches thick innnediately under the new grass lining on 

 which the three eggs were lying." 



[All the nests found by Mr. Farley, at Churchill, "were on rocks 

 except two that Avere placed on the tops of broken-off stub spruces; 



