160 Cameron, The Ferruginous Rough-leg. LApril 



four handsome eggs of variable shade, but usually with rich blotches 

 of umber brown on a creamy or greenish white ground. The eggs 

 are half as large again as those of the Common American Buzzard 

 Buieo swainsoni. The Ferruginous Rough-leg appears to incubate 

 for about twenty-five days, but I have not been able to time her 

 exactly. The yovmg birds are full-fledged and leave the nest when 

 about two months old but do not acquire the full adult plumage for 

 four or five years. Their call for the parents is at first soft and low, 

 (like the piping of young Golden Eagles), but develops into a 

 pleasing whistle by the time they are ready to leave the nest. The 

 hungry fledglings become very excited when they see one of their 

 parents approaching, and have a parrot-like trick of working their 

 heads and necks while snapping their beaks at the same time. If 

 handled, they resent it with their bills as well as their feet, and, in 

 my experience, are the only raptores to use the bill in defending 

 themselves. The Ferruginous Rough-leg is very fond of standing 

 upon one leg, keeping the other concealed among the feathers, and 

 is so depicted by Ridgway in Fisher's 'Hawks and Owls of The 

 United States.' As Dr. Fisher well remarks (op. cit. p. 92, 93), 

 "When this hawk is hunting its flight appears labored and heavy, 

 but when circling in the air its flight is graceful and resembles 

 closely that of the Golden Eagle." 



My own endeavors to observe Ferruginous Rough-legs at the 

 nest were to a great extent frustrated by outside interference. 

 In 1899, a pair nested upon the apex of a badland butte near my 

 ranch, and the female was sitting hard upon two eggs during the 

 first week in May. The nest appeared to be in an unfavorable sit- 

 uation, exposed to every wind, was lined with dried grass, and com- 

 posed of sage brush stalks, creeping cedar, and cedar drift-wood 

 sticks. The latter were the largest sticks I have ever seen used in 

 any nest, not excepting eyries of the Golden Eagle. Unfortunately, 

 a road wound by the nesting site, and the hawk was wantonly killed 

 before she had succeeded in hatching her nestlings. She might 

 easily have escaped when first startled from the nest, but was un- 

 willing to forsake her eggs, and flew screaming in circles above them 

 until she was shot. The victim was a fully adult female, and in 

 life must have been a truly magnificent bird. Her tail was entirely 

 snow-white except for a few small streaks of bright chestnut, and 



