DUCK HAWK 49 



described above, "a shelf about 12 feet long and 15 feet below the 

 top, on the vertical side." On March 30, 1930, he found another 

 nest, 125 miles farther west in the Cumberland Mountains; "this 

 nest was unusual, in that the eggs were laid in an old nest of the 

 red-tailed hawk, built in a recess in the cliff some 90 feet from the 

 bottom and 20 feet from the top." 



Mr. Ganier (1933) also located a pair of duck hawks at Reelfoot 

 Lake, in the northwestern corner of Tennessee, that were probably 

 breeding there; he says: "On April 24, in company with a group of 

 fellow students of bird life, the author identified a pair in the big 

 timber at the upper end of the lake. They were so bold and vociferous 

 in their protests that it was evident an eyrie with young was located 

 in the hollow top of one of the old cypress trees nearby." 



The European peregrine has been recorded as nesting in trees and 

 there are a few such records for this country. Robert Ridgway 

 (1889) writes: "In the spring of 1878, the writer found several pairs 

 nesting in sycamore trees in the neighborhood of Mt. Carmel [Illinois]. 

 Three nests were found in the immediate vicinity of the town. All 

 were placed in cavities in the top of very large sycamore trees, and 

 were inaccessible. One of these trees was felled, however, and 

 measurements with a tape-line showed the nest to have been eighty- 

 nine feet from the ground, its location being a shallow cavity, caused 

 by the breaking off of the main limb, the upper part of which pro- 

 jected over sufficiently to form a protection from the sun and rain." 



Col. N. S. Goss (1878) found- 

 in February, 1875, a pair nesting about three miles southeast of Neosho Falls, 

 Kansas, in the timber on the banks of the Neosho River. The nest was in a large 

 sycamore, about fifty feet from the ground, in a trough-like cavity formed by the 

 breaking off of a hollow limb near the body of the tree. I watched the pair 

 closely, with a view of securing both the birds and their eggs. March 27 I became 

 satisfied that the birds were sitting, and I shot the female, but was unable to get 

 near enough to shoot the male. The next morning I hired a young man to climb 

 the tree, who found three fresh eggs, laid on the fine soft rotten wood in a hollow 

 worked out of the same to fit the body. There was no other material or lining, 

 except a few feathers and down mixed with the decayed wood. 



Western nests are often in pot-holes or other cavities in sandstone 

 cliffs or high cut-banks. Major Bendire (1892) mentions such a nest, 

 above the falls of the Missouri, that "was situated in a small hollow 

 in a perpendicular wall of rock, some 15 or 20 feet above the base of 

 the wall, and consisted of a few coarse twigs and bits of grass, forming 

 a ridge on the outer side barely sufficient to prevent the eggs from 

 rolling out." He also writes of a set of eggs taken by Denis Gale 

 from an old eagle's nest on a rocky cliff on the Cache la Poudre Creek: 

 "The site was in a rocky ledge about 80 feet high and about 50 feet 

 from the foot of the cliff." 



