510 



THE SWAINSON ITA\M< 



gopliers, and the much-detested Cohinil)ian (".rnund Si|uirrel / Sj^LTiiiof^liilits 

 columhianus). Insects, such as grasshoppers, crickets, beetles, and tlie Hke, 

 form an even greater proportion of its food, and tlie Hawk is to be regarded 

 as liighly beneficial. Xo more eloquent testimony could be adduced for its 

 harmlessness than the almost haliitual nesting of smaller birds in the same 

 tree with a Swainson Hawk. 



The nest is seldom placed very high up, usually at a height of fifteen or 

 twenty feet in a small tree, as a 

 willow or alder. The nesting 

 platform is rather small for the 

 size of the bird, measuring as it 

 does, less than two feet in diame- 

 ter by a foot or such a matter in 

 depth. It is composed entirely of 

 sticks, but is lined afresli each 

 year with dried grass, bark strips, 

 or small leafy twigs. One seen in 

 Benton County contained a quan- 

 tity of the flowering twigs of a 

 williiw (Salix aiiiygdaloidcs) and 

 had quite a pleasing appearance. 

 The Hawks spend a good deal 

 of time in the vicinity of their 

 nests even before deposition of 

 eggs has begun ; and if a first set 

 is taken the female is very likely 

 to entrust a second to the same 

 nest. Two or three, rarely four, 

 eggs are laid, eacli at intervals of 

 two days, and they require 

 twenty-eight days of incubation. 

 Eggs are rarely deposited before 

 the middle of May, so that the 

 young are not often a-wing be- 

 fore the last week in July. Alwa3-s 

 unwary, exxept where unjustly persecuted. the Swainson Hawk will (if ten allow 

 a near inspection of its person ; while a young bird imagines you are joking, 

 and gapes appreciati\el}- when you fiing it a tentati\-e clod from the roadside. 



Swainson's Hawk is the most conspicuousl_\- migrator}- oi any of the 

 Hawks, and it sometimes travels in great com]>anies numbering over a thou- 

 sand individuals. Such a notable movement the author witnessed as a child 

 in western Kansas. An east-and-west-hing creek bed presented in its fringing 



Taken on Moses Lake. Photo by Dawson and Bowles. 

 XEST OF SW.MNSON H.-\\\K IN WILLOW. 



