80 NEBRASKA ORXITHOLOGISTS' UNION 



top, or rather I located the nesting site, the two recently hatched 

 birds and one egg merely resting- in a slight depression of the rock. 

 The young were very small, not much larger than the egg, and covered 

 with whitish down. The egg was a dull vinaceous buffy, closely 

 sprinkled and specked with reddish brown. I wished very much to 

 secure the egg and could probably have done so, but the soft rock was 

 slippery from a rain of the night before and Prof. Bruner thought it 

 unsafe to make the attempt, so I left it, but not without keen regret. 



Later, when we arrived at Warbonnet Canon, we sawr a pair of falcons 

 several times, but were for a long time unable to locate the nest. On 

 June 21, while working the east branch of the canon, my attention 

 was attracted by the cries of young hawks somewhere above me; 

 hastily clambering up the sloping side of the canon, and following the 

 direction of the cries, I soon located them as coming from five young 

 prairie falcons in a hole in the cliff about thirty feet up. The cavity 

 was wholly inaccessible except by descending on a rope from the top 

 nearly a hundred feet above, so I contented myself by climbing a pine 

 which grew near the cliff and taking a good look at the birds. During 

 this operation the female dashed back and forth between me and her 

 young, screaming incessantly. I visited the nest several times during 

 the next month, and intended to photograph them before they left 

 it, but other work prevented until after they had left, so the photo- 

 graph taken showed only the cavity where they had been. 



Sparrow Hawk (Falco sparverius). — The Sparrow Hawk is without 

 doubt the most common of the Raptores of the Pine Eidge region. 

 Every caiion contains from one to three pairs and thej' also straggle 

 out into the valleys along the creeks flowing from the canons. With 

 two exceptions all nests were found in oUl holes of the Flicker or 

 Lewis's Woodpecker. One exception was a nest found at Crawford, in 

 a crevice in a butte near the one containing the nest of the Prairie 

 Falcon, and made by scratching out the sand from a crevice between 

 two strata of rock. The hole was about two feet deep and the single 

 fresh egg was deposited on the still damp sand at its slightly enlarged 

 extremity. The other exception was a nest found by Dr. Wolcott, on 

 May 28, in an old dove cote near an abandoned ranch house, containing 

 five fresh eggs of the usual coloration. However, these are, as I said, 

 rare exceiitions, the usual site being an old woodpecker's hole. 



Cabanis's Woodpecker {Diiiohateft rillosus hijloscopus). — The breeding 

 habits of this bird are practically identical with those of its eastern 

 relative. It is not a common bird, but one nest being found in the 

 canons, and this contained young birds on June 21. The hole was 

 excavated in a dead stub of an elm about twenty feet from the ground. 

 The birds were, I think, more abundant in the cottonwoods along 

 Indian Creek, some twenty miles to the north. 



Poor-will {Phahrnoptihis vnttallii). — Not long after the setting of the 

 sun and when the depths of the canons are beginning to be wrapped 



