128 BULLETIN 17 0, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



We found it very rare in southern Arizona, where we saw only one 

 flying across the Santa Cruz River south of Tucson. 



Nesting.— We found several nests in the Kissimmee Prairie region 

 near Bassinger, Fla., during the latter part of March. The nests are 

 often so well concealed in the thick tops of the cabbage palmettos that 

 they are very hard to see. One pair evidently had a nest in a small 

 palmetto hammock, as they hung around it for over an hour while 

 I was hunting for the nest. There were numerous droppings and bits 

 of down scattered about, and the birds were flying about, screaming 

 and alighting in the trees near me; but, although I climbed to every 

 likely-looking thick top, I could not locate the nest. Two nests con- 

 taining young birds, two-thirds grown, were found on March 22, 

 1925. One was about 25 feet up in a cabbage palmetto on the edge 

 of a live-oak hammock; the nest was barely visible among the green 

 fans in the thick top, resting on the flatter stems; I had to cut away 

 some of the hanging fans before I could reach into it, and only with 

 considerable difficulty even then. It was a bulky structure, loosely 

 made of slender twigs, mainly the fruiting clusters of the palmetto, 

 and was lined with fine bits of the same material. The other was a 

 similar nest, about 30 feet up in the top of a slender, solitary palmetto 

 standing out in an open space; it also held young birds. All other 

 nests seen were similarly located in cabbage palmettos, except one; 

 this was only 15 feet from the ground on a branch of a live oak stand- 

 ing in an open space near a stream; it was made of small sticks. 



Frederic H. Kennard found a caracara's nest in the top of a large 

 solitary pine between Fort Myers and Immokalee, Fla. (pi. 22). 

 S. A. Grimes has sent me some photographs (pi. 23) of a nest that he 

 found on the Kissimmee Prairie on February 19, 1934; it was located 

 only 7 feet from the ground in a vine-covered clump of saw palmetto 

 (Serenoa serrulata), a very unusual site. The following year, the nest 

 was built 25 feet up in a cabbage palmetto a short distance away. 

 W. A. Smith sent me a photograph of a nest 7 feet up in an oak bush. 



Donald J. Nicholson (1929) says that "the caracara is one of the 

 earliest of the raptores to begin nesting in Florida. It begins some- 

 times early in December to lay eggs. But the height of the nesting 

 activity is in January and February and, even as late as April, nests 

 with eggs are to be found." He says elsewhere (1928) that out of 

 40 or 50 nests that he has seen, only three were built in oaks and one 

 in a pine; all the others were in cabbage palmettos. "Their nests are 

 made of green tough bushes, broken off by the birds, and sometimes 

 briars, piled up in a heap and trampled down until quite a decent 

 hollow is made. Usually the nests are unlined, but at times a few 

 green leaves or pieces of grape-vines are placed in the hollow. Con- 

 sequently the eggs rest upon a crude mass of rough, dried stems of 

 bushes." 



