October, 1893.] 



AND OOLOGIST. 



13s 



down. There was some green grass and 

 lots of maple leaves in the nest. 



They had flown when I next visited the 

 place on June 17th, and I think from the 

 looks of things that they left some time be- 

 fore the 15th. On climbing the tree I 

 found one of them lying on his back dead. 

 Had all of them been killed instead of fly- 

 ing off safely? The dead one smelled pretty 

 rank, but I don't think he had been dead 

 more than three or four days. Many of his 

 bones seemed to have been broken, but per- 

 haps, being young and tender, they had 

 softened. 



Possibly he had had a scrap with his 

 brothers, but I think if they had been so 

 rude as to kill him, they would have finished 

 the business by eating him up ! None of 

 his parts were missing, though. Then, too, 

 if it had been much of a fight he would have 

 fallen over the edge. He might have starved 

 to death, but I don't believe he would have 

 gone off so quickly, as he seemed as well as 

 the others on the 12th. On the whole, I 

 don't see what killed him. 



From watching this nest or Hen Hawks, 

 I found that it takes over two weeks, and 

 probably three, for Red- shouldered Hawks' 

 eggs to hatch, and about forty days or some- 

 thing less than six weeks before the young 

 leave the nest ; that they eat frogs and 

 snakes, which was well known before, and 

 that the parent does not break the egg to 

 let out the young one — about which, I be- 

 lieve, there has been some discussion. I 

 never saw any feathers in the nest or any in- 

 dications that they had been eating birds. 

 Further : the primaries come out first, in 

 their third week, and the tail feathers a lit- 

 tle later, while the body feathers do not open 

 out until about the fifth. They are not able 

 to stand up at first — this family did in their 

 fourth week — but they can prop themselves 

 upon their tails and howl after the first week. 

 How much of this would 1 have found 

 out if I had taken the eggs? I think that 

 tour or five sets at most, to show the varia- 



tion in color, is enough for anybody's collec- 

 tion. If it is necessary to know the average 

 number of eggs laid by a bird, why can't it 

 be found just as easily by leaving the eggs 

 and taking notes instead? I think such 

 lists as the Jackson collection, in the Feb- 

 ruary number, are interesting and useful, 

 but I would be more interested and more 

 instructed by some good notes on the breed- 

 ing habits or nests, rather than the mere eggs. 

 The egg is simply a product of nature which 

 the bird has nothing to do with, but the 

 shape and location of the nest depend 

 wholly on her ingenuity. Therefore I think 

 a collection of, or notes upon, nests is more 

 interesting than anything which has to do 

 wholly with eggs. 



But what I want to know is, what killed 

 that young Hawk, and why did the old one 

 bring so manv green leaves to the nest? 



Henry R. Buck. 



Notes from Greenland. 



During a short sojourn in Copenhagen in 

 January of this year, I visited the Zoological 

 Museum of the town, as during my previous 

 stay in Greenland I had become interested 

 in the ornithology of that icy land. I ex- 

 amined especially the Greenland bird skins, 

 under the guidance of the inspector of the 

 museum, Mr. H. ^Vinge. As (Jreenland be- 

 longs to the North .American territory, I 

 think your readers will be interested to learn 

 of the most remarkable observations that I 

 made. 



A recent acquisition of the museum was a 

 collection of bird skins taken on the shores 

 of Eastern Greenland, north of 65 deg. N. 

 lat., by the Danish expedition, which had just 

 returned after having explored that hitherto 

 unknown part. The most remarkable were 2 

 skins of Anser segetiini, Bean Goose, both 

 taken in June, 189 i . (.As I remember, June 

 5 and June 17). This makes it very proba- 

 ble that it breeds in those tracts. To my 

 ! knowledge these are the first specimens 



