102 NESTS AND EGGS OF NORTH AMERICAN BIRDS. 



United States north to Virginia, sometimes straying to the Middle 

 States; regularly up the entire Mississippi valley, to Minnesota and Da- 

 kota, to latitude 49°. A skin of a fine specimen is before me, which 

 was killed in Fairfield county, Ohio, one mile frrom Sugar Grove, by 

 Frank Bowers, about July loth, 1883; another specimen was taken near 

 Pataskala, August 22th, 1878. Previous to these records it has not been 

 heard of in the State since 1858. The nest of this Kite is built at the 

 extremity of smaH branches near the tops of the tallest trees. The one 

 represented in Plate V is taken from a sketch made on the spot by Mr. 

 Singley. This nest, as represented, is placed in the top branches of a 

 pecan tree; it is composed of sticks and pieces of green moss, some of 

 the moss hanging over the sides, giving it a beautiful appearance when 

 seen from the ground. Outwardly it measures eighteen inches in diame- 

 ter; depth twelve inches. Two eggs from this nest measure 1.77 by 1.43, 

 1. 8 1 by 1.45. In other localities the materials for the nest differ, no moss 

 being used. Mr. Singley says the birds are very vicious while nesting; he 

 says he has seen them attack and drive off Owls, Turkey Buzzards, Red- 

 bellied Hawks, Black Vultures, and Crows. On April 25th, 1885, while 

 his collector, Mr. Theodore Thassler, was climbing to the nest represented 

 in the Plate, he was almost knocked out of the tree by the birds ; and be- 

 fore he could secure the eggs was compelled to kill the most pugnacious 

 one, which proved to be the male. Unlike the White tailed Kite, when 

 the nest is disturbed the birds will desert it. 



427. White-tailed Kite — elanus glaucus. Dull, creamy-white, thickly 

 blotched, dotted and tinged with deep chestnut, in some almost com- 

 pletely covering the whole ground; nearly spherical; four to six; this is 

 the number usually given, but four is almost invariably the number of eggs 

 laid. A set of four eggs collected by Mr. B. W. Evermann in the Santa 

 Clara Valley, California, now in my cabinet, measure 1.64 by 1.27, 1.62 

 by 1.27, 1.69 by 1.27, 1.62 by 1.27. The eggs of the European Kestrel 

 and those of the White-tailed Kite are precisely alike in markings; the eggs 

 of the latter, however, are much larger. The Black-shouldered or White- 

 tailed Kite is distributed throughout Southern United States from the 

 Atlantic to the Pacific, and south to South America. In the East it is 

 found as far north as Southern Illinois; in the west as far north as Indian 

 Territory and Middle California. The nest, like that of the Swallow-tailed 

 Kite, is always placed just as high in the tree as possible ; in fact, Mr. 

 Evermann says of all he examined he did not notice an exception ; and so 

 slender are the limbs or twigs on which it is placed that he who attempts 

 to climb to it stands about three chances to two of breaking his neck. 



