THE NEW SPORT OF “HAWKING” 263 
Now we will drive a mile west and try a pine grove, where 
a pair of Red-shoulders always nest. The Barred Owls that 
used to breed here have gone, but the hawk proves constant. 
There goes one of them from near the last year’s nest. It 
is an easy climb of thirty-hve feet, plenty of limbs, a regular 
step-ladder pine. Not an egg is yet laid; this particular 
pair is habitually later than the others that I know of. Some 
of them are already incubating their sets, but in this case, 
judging from past experience, the eggs will hardly be all 
laid before the twenty-hfth. There will be three or four; the 
Red-shoulder is more prolihc than the Red-tail. 
Last year another pair of Red-tails had young in a pine 
swamp away out beyond Lakeville Precinct, and probably 
have nested there again ; so we will drive out there over that 
narrow road where for miles we see but one house. Here is 
the pasture where we will leave the horse ; the nest is just 
across the edge of this swamp on the border of a clearing. 
Almost entirely blown down ! Then we must search the big 
tract through, separating and working systematically in 
parallel lines. It gets tiresome, but let us not give it up. 
“ There she goes,” — did I hear a shout ? Yes, and the hawk 
is sailing over my head, just above the trees, and, wheeling, 
her tail, dull red above, flashes in the sun. You did well 
to see that nest almost hidden from observation in that 
unusually thick pine, again sixty feet from below. And 
how much wilder she was than the other, to leave the nest 
at the first rap ! There will not be three eggs this time, only 
the usual two, but beautifully spotted. We are more than 
satisfied as, under the lengthening shadows of the woods, the 
horse fairly flies toward her bin of oats. 
In western New England in the hill country, the Red-tail’s 
favorite nesting-site is on some tall chestnut or oak growing 
from the foot of a steep, rocky declivity a little way up from 
