154 Bird -Lore 



often fly about with four- or five-foot lengths of this grass streaming out behind 

 like a long tail. 



While most of the Gardiner's Island Fish Hawks select normal nesting 

 sites in trees, about ten pairs of birds place their nests on the ground, and these 

 ground-nesting birds as a rule build on the beach. x'Vll the pictures here shown 



THE OBSERVATION BLIND IN POSITION 



are of these beach nests. Some, it will be observed, are small while others hold 

 several cartloads of sticks. Such variation is in part individual and in part due 

 to the age of the nest. In the Bird-Lore article before referred to I -have ex- 

 pressed the behef that these nests are built by birds which have not inherited 

 the tree-building instinct common to their species, but which, nevertheless, 

 succeed in rearing a family because of the absolute protection afiforded by their 

 insular environment. I do not observe that the number of beach nests has 

 increased since 1901 and the ground-nesting habit does not, therefore, appear 

 to be hereditary. 



The love of Fish Hawks for their nest-site has often been commented on 

 and there are many illustrations of it on Gardiner's Island. Nests built in cedars 

 in time often break the tree, when a new nest is constructed on the ruins of the 

 old one. In one instance, a tall tree standing alone in a field had held a Fish 

 Hawk's nest for as many years as any one could remember. During a storm it 

 fell and the nest was scattered over the ground. The birds then attempted 



