THE NEW SPORT OE “HAWKING” 279 
Somehow, though, it is by no means as easy as it looks to 
obtain a large, sharp, first-class picture. 
The aforesaid Bald Eagles are much harder subjects for the 
camera. Their nests are huge, and usually high in monster 
trees, and the owners are always difficult of approach. They 
nest very early in the season, in Florida even the year before, 
one might say, —about December, — so that I have always 
come too late even to find young. 
Coming now to our late breeders, the Broad-winged Hawk 
is about the same size as the Cooper’s, but in form, habit, and 
movements is very much like the Red-shouldered. Some¬ 
times it soars about uttering a peculiar shrill whistle, which 
a German friend of mine, who was a great hawk-hunter, 
and had a pair of these hawks on his farm, thought was 
a “grieved note,” as he called it, of the female Red-shoulder, 
deprived of her eggs. But presently his birds quieted down, 
and, selecting an old nest in a pine grove near by, soon after 
the middle of May rejoiced in the prospects afforded by two 
smallish brown and lilac spotted eggs. 
Two eggs is the usual number at one laying, though I have 
found three. And though May twentieth is the standard 
date for the full set, it is sometimes earlier, for I once found 
a nest in a low pine on May fourth with one egg, and the 
set of two, which I examined on the ninth, had probably 
been completed by the si.xth. This same pair the next sea¬ 
son made a nest in a pine a few yards away, only nineteen 
feet from the ground, in which were three eggs. When dis¬ 
turbed, the female gently flapped off a couple of gunshots, 
and, alighting in a tree, motionless and silent, awaited the 
departure of the intruder. 
Another nest of Broad-wings which I found was in a most 
picturesque spot, in Kent, Connecticut. A large mountain 
brook leaps forty feet over a precipice in some dark hemlock 
