288 
WILD WINGS 
Hawk, when closely approached, also started from her nest, 
with three newly hatched young, clad in yellowish down, and 
three eggs not yet hatched. Across on the opposite shore of 
the pond, not a quarter of a mile away, we put up another 
Marsh Hawk from six half-incubated eggs. 
A few days later, the third of June, we had a wonderful 
experience with the Marsh Hawks. Driving eight miles from 
camp, we searched two closely adjoining sloughs, in all a ter¬ 
ritory about a mile square. Not to speak of numerous ducks’ 
nests, and others, we began by flushing a Marsh Hawk, 
about ten yards from us. Her odd family consisted of two 
young, three normal eggs and one small runt, six in all. 
Shortly after this, one of my companions, coming out into 
the slough to see a Sora’s nest that I had found, discovered 
another Marsh Hawks’ home in the meadow grass where 
there was a little water. It held six young and was necessarily 
quite a structure, measuring eighteen inches in height and 
thirty across. Plodding out into the next slough, another 
Marsh Hawk made some fuss over a nest I did not take the 
trouble to hunt up. At the farther end of this slough I found 
two more nests, only a few rods apart, the first with six eggs, 
the other with four young and an addled egg. As we 
drove home, the dogs, ranging out on the prairie, started still 
another hawk from its scant nest in a little depression, with 
four eggs. I took pictures of several of the nests, and, all in 
all, it was preeminently a Marsh Hawk day. 
A fine, striking raptor of the prairie is the Ferruginous 
Rough-legged Hawk. No one can well mistake it, with its 
light breast and white tail, as it soars about. In disposition 
it seems much like the Swainson’s Hawk, being rather quiet 
and not particularly shy, though it is a very solitary bird, and 
retires more and more into the wilder parts as the countrv 
becomes settled. Like the Swainson’s, it builds large nests on 
