BIRDS OF PREY 14] 
teen to fifteen inches at its largest diameter. In it are 
laid four or five dull light-green eggs, either plain or 
sparsely spotted with brown. Here the adults brood by 
turns, the free one bringing food in its claws and drop- 
ping it from the air to its mate on the nest below, as if 
by accident ; for these handsome Hawks are wise and 
very, very wary. I have seen them bring sticks for nest- 
ing materials and drop them in the same way to the 
other bird in the grass. You will rarely discover the 
nest by seeing them alight near it. When the time for 
a change of labor has come, one of the birds circles over 
and over, without dropping food, and finally alights in a 
tree, if there be one there. Before you know it another 
Hawk, his counterpart except for size, is circling in his 
place while he still sits in the tree. By and by he is 
gone from the tree, but in most instances you have not 
seen him go, you have been so intently watching the 
gyrations of his mate in the air. 
In eighteen to twenty days the young Hawks break 
their hard shells, one each day, and cuddle down among 
the feathers and straw of the crude nest. From the day 
the first little ball of down appears, one or the other 
of the adults may be seen constantly on the wing over that 
meadow. The same tactics are pursued as before, for 
the food is dropped to the parent on the nest, who, after 
the first few days, holds it fast in her beak while the 
nestlings tear off bits from it for themselves. In this 
way the muscles of bill and neck are developed. Later 
on the food is simply dropped to them, both parents 
being off on the hunt, and the little fellows grasp it in 
