THE OOLOGIST 



65 



the past three years I have been a 

 subscriber. Many times after reading 

 some article that particularly interest- 

 ed me I have been tempted to tell 

 something from my own experiences. 

 However, I have always lacked the 

 courage to do so and it is only through 

 the reading of a recent article by a 

 youthful subscriber like myself, that I 

 feel sufficiently prompted to commit 

 my first offense. 



For several years I have been inter- 

 ested in a pair of American Sparrow 

 Hawks that have frequented the 

 Waynesburg Commons and nested in 

 the loft of a nearby school house. The 

 Commons is a belt of land running al- 

 most across the town and divided into 

 several parks thickly wooded with 

 maples, basswoods and other decidu- 

 ous trees. Near one end of the Com- 

 mons stand two brick school houses 

 separated from the park only by a 

 street and likewise from each other by 

 an intersecting street. My interest in 

 this particular pair of birds began 

 when I was a tow-headed pupil in the 

 smaller and older of these two build- 

 ings, a three story structure known as 

 Hanna Hall. Many years ago a pair 

 of ambitious Flickers pounded three 

 holes in its cornice, all of them at the 

 rear of the building, that is at the end 

 away from the park. One of these 

 holes was in the angle of the gable 

 and the others were in the two cor- 

 ners. Sometime later the Hawk? 

 came, drove out the Flickers and be- 

 gan nesting in the northwest corner. 

 Their nest was made on the rough lath 

 and plaster of the ceiling of the room 

 below and in the angle made by two 

 large timbers a'bout a foot from the 

 opening. It consisted only of a few 

 sticks and their own excretions. They 

 successfully raised broods here for 

 three and possibly four seasons when 

 their eggs were taken by a collector 

 and they moved to the more ihaccess- 

 able hole in the gable. Here they 



nested two seasons and were still in 

 evidence the following year. This 

 was about the time I began to take a 

 more active interest in ornithology 

 and to collect occasional sets of eggs 

 of the commoner species. I de- 

 termined to secure a set of Sparrow 

 Hawks and that Spring (1917) on 

 April the 17th paid my first visit to 

 the loft. I surprised one of the old 

 birds on the nest in the gable hole but 

 was, of course, too early to find eggs. 

 I did, however, find a pair of Screech 

 Owls nesting in the northeast corner 

 and took a set of three well incubated 

 eggs. During the following weeks I 

 paid the loft several visits and al- 

 though. I found a Flicker roosting in 

 one of the holes the Hawks apparent- 

 ly had been frightened out of nesting 

 though they remained in the vicinity. 

 The following two years I visited the 

 loft occasionally and was puzzled by 

 what I observed. The Hawks were al- 

 ways in evidence but no eggs or young 

 were ever found though the old pair 

 were always to be found with a brood 

 of three or four young in the dead 

 locust back of the school house after 

 the nesting season was over. In the 

 spring of 1919, I was now a high school 

 student, I was told that the Hawks 

 were beginning to make a nuisance of 

 themselves by preying on the birds in 

 the park and I was asked one day by 

 the supervisor of the schools to shoot 

 them. Not wishing to do this as I felt 

 that there was a brood of downy little 

 fellows somewhere to starve to death 

 I went to my father for advice and he 

 suggested that I make another search, 

 move the brood to another location 

 and stop up the nest entrance. After 

 some inquiry and observation I found 

 that they were then using an old 

 Flicker hole in the cornice at the rear 

 of the second school building. The 

 mystery of the broods of 1917 and '18 

 was now explainable and a visit to the 

 loft cleared it up. It was a sunny 



