Vol. XXXIII 



1915 



Simmons, Nesting of Texan Birds. 323 



On April 29, 1911, I found the nest when it contained two downy young 

 only a day or two out of the shell. The nest was placed about thirty feet 

 up in a small pine tree in the woods on Buffalo Bayou about eight miles 

 west of Houston. It was a well-constructed domicile, and had evidently 

 been used for several seasons. It was a mass of sticks, dead leaves and 

 Spanish moss twenty-four inches high, in a crotch formed by three branches 

 of the main trunk of the tree. It measured twenty-one inches across the- 

 top; and the cavity, which was three inches deep, was neatly lined with 

 quite a quantity of fresh, green and fragrant pine needles. 



Seven days later (May 6) the young were slightly larger, and the 

 sheathed tips of the primaries were beginning to appear. And on May 14 

 they faced me with snapping beaks and showed a strong desire to claw me. 

 Both were gaining in strength and size day by day, though one of the birds 

 appeared smaller and more timid than the other. The tips of the primaries 

 had appeared. 



On May 27, the last day I was able to visit the nest, the young were 

 nearly as large as the parents. With the exception of their heads they were ' 

 apparently fully feathered. Their heads had a rather mottled appearance, 

 caused by the feathers appearing amid the grayish down. Undoubtedly 

 they would leave the nest in a day or two. 



On the various trips I made to the nest, I found beside the young the 

 remains of their food: small snakes, frogs, and on one occasion the 

 remains of a bird, a male Louisiana Cardinal (C. c. magnirostris) . 



The other nests which I located were all in pines, from forty to eighty 

 feet from the ground, generally in open pine woods with little underbrush. 



Haliaeetus leucocephalus leucocephalus. Bald Eagle. — Very 

 rare resident, inhabiting the wilder country around Galveston Bay. I was 

 shown a young bird which was taken from a nest in the bottom woods on 

 Taylor's Bayou not far from the bay, and later viewed the nest, a massive 

 structure seventy feet from the ground in an immense pine. This nest was 

 destroyed by a violent storm in the latter part of 1911. Another nest has 

 been reported to me from the north side of the bay, but I have not had the 

 time to visit the locality and investigate. 



Otus asio mccallii. Texas? : Screech Owl. — April 5, 1913, in the 

 woods on Buffalo Bayou about four and a half miles west of Houston, I 

 found a nest in a natural hollow of an elm tree standing on the slope of the 

 bayou; it contained four eggs, incubation far advanced. The entrance 

 to the cavity was nine feet from the ground at a bend in the trunk of the 

 tree; from the bend the cavity extended almost vertically down into the 

 heart of the tree, about thirty inches deep and six inches in diameter; 

 trunk of tree about ten inches in diameter. Only a few leaves and grasses, 

 with a slight lining of feathers, were between the eggs and the bottom of the 

 cavity. It was some time before I could force the female to leave the nest; 



1 Cf. Ridgway, Robert. The Birds of North and Middle America. Part VI, 

 p. 694, footnote b. 



