DUCK HAWK 47 



times had the experience of watching a falcon carefully form a nest 

 hollow only to return after a short interval and discover the first 

 eggs in quite a different spot on the cliff. The eggs are laid at inter- 

 vals of every other day, with often two full days between the third 

 and fourth." 



Nesting. — I shall never forget how my youthful enthusiasm was 

 fired by reading in my ornithological primer, Samuels's "Birds of 

 New England", the thrilling account of the taking of the eggs of the 

 great-footed hawk on Mount Tom by C. W. Bennett, on April 19, 

 1864, and how I longed to have a similar experience. But it was 

 many years before I had the pleasure of visiting this historic old aerie. 

 Duck hawks had been known to breed in the Holyoke Range, includ- 

 ing Mount Tom, in central Massachusetts, and on Talcott Mountain 

 in Connecticut since 1861, where they had probably nested for many 

 previous years. Dr. J. A. Allen (1869) says that the eggs taken by 

 Mr. Bennett "were the first eggs of the duck hawk known to natu- 

 ralists to have been obtained in the United States, the previous most 

 southern locality whence they had been taken being Labrador." He 

 says further: 



Mr. C. W. Bennett, of Holyoke, their discoverer, has since carefully watched 

 them, and his frequent laborious searches for their nest have been well rewarded. 

 In 1866 he took a second set of eggs, three in number, from the eyrie previously 

 occupied. In 1867 the male bird was killed late in April, and this apparently 

 prevented their breeding there that year, as they probably otherwise would have 

 done. At least no nest was that year discovered. In 1868 hawks of this species 

 were seen about the mountains, and although they reared their young there, all 

 effort to discover their nest was ineffectual. The present year (1869) they com- 

 menced to lay in the old nesting place, but as they were robbed when but one 

 egg had been deposited, they deserted it and chose a site still more inaccessible. 

 Here they were equally unfortunate, for during a visit to this mountain, in com- 

 pany with Mr. Bennett (April 28th), we had the great pleasure of discovering 

 their second eyrie, and from which, with considerable difficulty, three freshly 

 laid eggs were obtained. Not discouraged by this second misfortune, they 

 nested again, this time depositing their eggs in the old eyrie from which all except 

 the last set of eggs have been obtained. Again they were unfortunate, Mr. 

 Bennett removing their second set of eggs, three in number, May 23d, at which 

 time incubation had just commenced. The birds remained about the mountain 

 all the summer, and from the anxiety they manifested in August it appears not 

 improbable that they laid a third time, and at this late period had unfledged 

 young. 



Probably these falcons, or their successors, have nested on Mount 

 Tom ever since then. When we visited this locality on April 14, 

 1928, we found the nest situated on a shelf of rock 55 feet from the 

 base of a nearly perpendicular cliff, 120 feet high, above a long, slop- 

 ing talus of broken rock. The photograph (pi. 11) taken by my 

 companion, Robert L. Coffin, shows the general location very well 

 but gives only a faint idea of the beauty of the landscape spread out 

 before us, the alluvial plain of the Connecticut River with its pan- 



