THE OOLOGIST 



29 



mosphere. Hut u|)oii reaching the nest 

 I peeped over the rim upon two dirty, 

 pcorly s|)otted eggs. All fear of fall- 

 ing now vanished. .My first set of Red- 

 I ailed Hawlv's eggs was at hand! 1 

 packed the eggs carefully and decend- 

 ed the tree. During all my experi- 

 ences with nests and eggs I can truly 

 say that never before nor since did 

 "bliss and felicity reign supreme." 



.March of the following year was as 

 warm and pleasant as any June time. 

 The Red-tails built early and had 

 about completed laying by the 24th. 

 The first nest found was in the top of 

 a large white oak that stood on a 

 wooded hillside. It was eighty-five 

 feet up, and proved to be a hard climb. 

 From this nest I collected three of the 

 handsomest Hawk's eggs I have ever 

 seen. All three of them are beautifully 

 blotched with dark reddish-brown. 



Eight miles west of town I discover- 

 ed an old Hawk at home in the triple 

 crotch of a tall white oak that stood 

 in a wooded hollow. No amount of 

 pounding on the tree would cause the 

 old bird to leave. But when the 

 climber was half way up she sailed 

 away to return time after time, almost 

 hitting his head. I never saw such a 

 pugnacious Red-tail. 



Early in April another Red-tail's 

 nest was found in a wooded ravine 

 some two miles from town. It was 

 ninety-five feet uj) in the top of a tall 

 white oak. From the road, a quarter 

 of a mile away, the nest could be plain- 

 ly seen; so large and consi)icuous it 

 was! From this nest I secured two 

 beautifully marked eggs. One is en- 

 tirely covered with spots over the 

 larger end; and the other is more rv 

 less streaked with dark red. 



Since finding the preceeding nests 

 ciuite a number of others have com*,' 

 under my observation. Most of these 

 nests held but two eggs. I noticed 

 that some Hawk's would desert a lest 



if the incompleted set were handled, 

 whole others did not seem to care, 

 and returned. Of over twenty nests 

 which I examined 1 procured a number 

 of good photographs, but not one show- 

 ing the nest and eggs at a close range 

 owing to the difficulty of securing a 

 Fuital)le ])osition from which to take 

 exposures. S. S. Dickey. 



Waynes burg, Pa. 



Eagle Notes from Virginia. 

 Haliffitus Cleucocephalus. Bald Eagle. 



Eagle time is nearly with us once 

 more, a fact brought home to me forci- 

 bly a short time ago. I was out in the 

 woods looking for a flock of wild turk- 

 eys that I had jjreviously located, 

 when happening to glance up I recog- 

 nized one of my Bald Eagle trees. 

 There it was, not twenty-five feet 

 away, and going closer I found the tell 

 tale marks of my climbers, worn by 

 the Billy Crispin when last with me. 

 This was the last tree visited in Feb- 

 ruary, 1913, and yielded a fine set of 

 two fresh eggs. Billy left me that 

 afternoon for home, but expecting to 

 stop in Maryland en route to collect 

 a set from an old stand-by tree of his 

 in that State. Little did I think when 

 we said good-by it would be the last 

 I would see of him. I made few notes 

 of his visit in detail, as I expected to 

 leave the write up to him, and so 

 stated in the May OOLOGIST (pages 

 85-88). Should anyone have come into 

 l)cssession of his field notes, I would 

 ai)preciate their writing up this tri]), 

 but if none ai)pears I will try and util- 

 ize in a short article my notes from 

 ledger and data sheets. 



Crispin was a fearless and magnifi- 

 cent climber, and I cannot but feel 

 that if he had stuck to trees, he would 

 have been alive today. On his first 

 visit to me, he became acquainted with 

 a special strap and belt that I had 

 made for eagle trees especially, and 



