292 LIFE HISTOKIES OF NORTH AMERICAN BIRDS. 



of collectors. The old birds are shy and wary, and niucli harder to brinja^ 

 to bag. If the eggs are near the point of liatching, or if tliere are young 

 in the nest, the parents will occasionally defend them, showing at times 

 considerable courage. 



The majority of the eggs of the Prairie Falcon in the U. S. National 

 Museum collection are lighter colored than those of any other Falcons found 

 on the North American continent, excepting the eggs of the Sparrow Hawk. 

 The ground color is creamy white, and easily visible in a majority of the 

 specimens Ijefore me. In a few, however, this is entirely obscured by the 

 overlying pigment, giving the egg a vinaceous cinnamon color, and in 

 others a dirty clay color. They are blotched and spotted with different 

 shades of reddish brown, tawny, and chocolate. As a rule these markings 

 are pretty evenly distributed over the entire egg ; only in an occasional 

 specimen are they heaviest on one end, and in such cases usually confluent. 

 The average measurement of fourteen specimens in the U. S. National 

 Museum collection is 53 by 41.5 millimetres, the largest egg measuring 56 

 by 41, the smallest 52 by 40 millimetres. 



The type specimens No. 15596 (PI. 10, Fig. 2), selected from a set of 

 five, representing one of the heavier marked eggs, was taken by Mr. H. R. 

 Durkee, near Gilmer, Wyoming, May 13, 1870, and No. 20664, from the Ben- 

 dii'e collection (PI. 10, Fig. 3), also from a set of five, was taken in Pine 

 Canon, Mount Diablo, California, by Mr. H. E. Bryant, March 25, 1882. 

 This is one of the more sparingly marked specimens in the collection. 



g8. Falco peregrinus anatum (Bonaparte). 



DUCK HAWK. 



Falco anatum Bonaparte, Geographical and Comparative List. 1838, 4. 

 Falco peregrinus /3 anatum Blasius, List of the Birds of Europe, 1862, 3. 



(B 5, 6, C 343, R 414, C 503, U 356.) 



Geographical range : Whole of America, south as far at least as Chile ; east- 

 ern Asia. ? 



The breeding range of the Duck Hawk, or Peregrine Falcon, includes 

 the greater portion of the United States and the Dominion of Canada, 

 excepting perhaps the extreme southern portions of our domain, such as 

 Florida and the cotton States bordering on the Gulf coast, where it appears 

 to be a winter visitor only. It nests sparingly in suitable localities through- 

 out the thinly settled mountainous portions of South Carolina from aboiit 

 latitude 35° N., northward, and generally among the more or less inaccessible 

 cliffs found near the shores of the larger mountain streams and lakes of the 

 Atlantic watershed. In the middle and western prairie regions, Avhere there 

 are no suitable cliffs, it nests in hollows of trees in the heavily timbered 

 bottom lands. Throughout the Rocky Mountains, north to the shores of 



