268 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1924 



ments which it was then possible to secure upon the ground, I am 

 able to give its exact dimensions. It was 9 feet in height and had a 

 nearly uniform diameter of 6 feet; according to report it had been 

 occupied for 15 years, and its top, as I found, had originally stood 

 at a height of 77 feet from the ground. The nest was essentially 

 wedged between two upright branches, though receiving some support 

 from a smaller division of the main stem which at the base attained 

 a diameter of 3i/^ feet; its two main supports were broken off at a 

 height of 6 feet from the top of the aerie and served the eagles as 

 favorite perches and lookout points; the nest was a great mass of 

 wattled or intercrossed sticks, made solid with earth and the result- 

 ant decay of the annual additions of weeds, stubble, and straw. 



For many years these eagles were said to have occupied a dead 

 sycamore in the midst of woods in Milesgrove, Pa. ; when this aged 

 tree succumbed, the more famous nest, which we have described, was 

 established in another sycamore, also dead, at North Springfield just 

 over the line, in Ohio, in 1885; this lasted, as we have seen, 15 

 years, or until January, 1900. The third nest was started in the 

 spring of that year at a point not many rods from the site of the 

 second and again in a sycamore, but this time in a living and sound 

 one. This tree had a girth of 12 feet at the ground and a clean 

 straight bole without a branch for 60 feet ; at this point it spread a 

 number of strong arms which formed an all-embracing niche for 

 a nest of great size. No doubt it was this great crotch which had 

 attracted the eagles, though close beside it rose a stately tulip tree, 

 the branches of which met those of the sycamore and partly over- 

 shadowed them. 



Upon approaching this nest on the 8th day of June not a sound 

 was heard for full 20 minutes, when suddenly one of the eagles 

 appeared, whose behavior suggested the male bird, and circling over- 

 head, began to sound his peculiar alarm, which I have heard many 

 times since. It may be transliterated as har! kar! kar! with some- 

 times the suggestion of a final h at the end of each syllable, or again 

 as cac-cac-ca€ ! Then, alighting in the topmost branch of a dead 

 tree, he expressed his emotion in a manner characteristic of many 

 birds even as remote of kin as the nighthawk ; with depressed head 

 and neck outstretched, with drooped and quivering wings, his man- 

 dibles would open and close with the regularity of clockwork. Dr. 

 William L. Ralph ° was always able to recognize the male by this 

 alarm, the call of the female being more harsh and often broken. 

 The female w^as sitting in her aerie during the time of our approach, 

 as became evident when she suddenly left it and with protesting 



«Bendire, Captain Charles. Life Histories of North American Birds. Smithsonian 

 Contributions, Vol. XXVIII. Washinfrton, 1S92. 



