THE SHARP-SHINNED HAWK. 307 
Not only are the Marsh Hawks wedded for life, but the male is very 
devoted to his family. He assists in nest building, shares the duty of incu- 
bation, and is assiduous in providing for his brooding mate. During the 
last week in April or the first week of May a nesting site is selected, usually 
in the tall grass adjoining a swamp. If the ground is wet, sticks are first 
laid down, but otherwise only grass, dead leaves, and weed-stems, with a 
little hair and moss or feathers, are used to build up a low platform, broad 
and slightly hollowed on top. Here four or five eggs are commonly laid, 
but six is not unusual, and two sets of eight are recorded, one from Washing- 
ton and one from Iowa. In the former state I once found a nest on the 
ground in a little opening of a poplar grove, the birds having probably retired 
to the woods to avoid the winds prevalent at that season. 
Incubation is accomplished in about three weeks, or if it has commenced 
with the laying of the first egg, as is often the case, then the last egg may 
not hatch for a week longer. While the female is brooding the young, she 
is frequently fed by the male from a considerable height. Mr. Lynds Jones 
relates one such instance where an element of sportiveness seemed to enter 
in: “Once during the breeding season I saw a male catch a large garter 
snake and fly up with it several hundred feet, then drop it to the female who 
just then came flying along near the ground; she caught and carried it 
to the nest, followed by the male.” 
The young after leaving the nest hunt for several months with their 
parents, and the last and costliest lesson which they learn is fear of man. If 
these most excellent mousers had half the gratitude shown them which we 
manifest to cats, they might be abundant where they are now rare. Doubt- 
less some scores of pairs, all told, might be mustered within the state, but 
have record of only three specific instances of their nesting. 
No. 177. 
SHARP-SHINNED HAWK. 
A. O. U. No. 332. Accipiter velox (Wils.). 
Description.—Adult: Above slaty gray, dark plumbeous, or checolate- 
brown. with a glaucous cast, darker but not black on head; occipital feathers, 
scapulars, and inner quills with concealed white at base; primaries banded with 
two shades of fuscous above, contrasting dusky and whitish below; tail, nearly 
square, slightly emarginate, crossed by five dusky bands, and narrowly whitish at 
tip, the basal band concealed and nearly obsolete; auriculars rusty, with black 
shaft-lines; throat whitish or pale buffy with blackish shafts; remaining under 
parts white, heavily barred on breast, belly, sides, axillaries, and shanks with 
pale cinnamon-rufous,—feathers of breast with blackish shaft-lines; lining of 
