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30 ORNITHOLOGY AND OOLOGY. 
the duck the last time, I pulled trigger on him; for we are 
all eminently selfish, and when one of the lower animals, 
as we regard them, interferes with us in our pleasures or 
comforts, even if they are fulfilling the dictates of their 
natures, we brush them from existence, as if we were the 
only rightful possessors of this beautiful world. Fortu- 
nately for the hawk, unfortunately for the flapper, and 
much to my chagrin, the cap failed to explode, and the poor 
duck was borne off for food for the family of the hawk. 
The Cooper’s Hawk breeds in all the New-England States, 
and is partial to no particular locality. 1 have found the 
nest in sections not a mile from the seacoast; in the deepest 
woods of Northern Maine; and have had the eggs sent me 
from different localities in Rhode Island, Connecticut, and 
New Hampshire. 
The nest of this species is more often found than that of 
any other. In my collecting trips, my experience has been 
that I have found certainly two nests of this to one of all 
others. Audubon says, “ The nest is usually placed in the 
forks of the branch of an oak-tree, towards its extremity. 
In its general appearance, it resembles that of the common 
crow, for which I have several times mistaken it. It is com- 
posed externally of numerous crooked sticks, and has a slight 
lining of grasses and a few feathers.” This does not agree 
with my observation ; for, in great numbers of nests that I 
have examined, in which I have found no great variation in 
character, they were almost invariably in a fork of a tall 
tree near the top, —in three cases out of five in the differ- 
ent pines. They were large, bulky affairs, constructed of 
twigs and sticks, some of them nearly half an inch in 
diameter: they were decidedly hollowed, and often lined » 
with leaves and the loose bark of the cedar. The eggs of 
this species vary in number from two to four. I do not 
remember ever having found more than four, which number 
is usually laid. Their ground-color is a dirty bluish-white, 
with often thinly scattered spots of brown, or obscure 
