274 Twelve Months With 



tailed next, and occasional nests of the Cooper, 

 sharp-shinned and marsh hawks were found. 

 These are still the common resident hawks in this 

 latitude. The beautiful little sparrow hawk, was 

 also abundant, as it is now, nesting in natural cav- 

 ities in old trees in the woods. The eggs of this 

 little hawk are as beautifully mottled with various 

 shades of brown as the birds themselves. Usually 

 the red-tailed and red-shouldered hawks nest high 

 up in the largest trees in the woods, building a 

 large nest of coarse sticks. I distinctly remember 

 one nest of the red-shouldered hawk ninety feet 

 from the ground, in a giant sycamore hanging 

 almost over a railroad track which cut through 

 the woods. 



The red-shouldered and red-tailed hawks, the 

 "chicken hawks" of the farmers, are much abused 

 and greatly misunderstood birds. The ordinary 

 farmer usually has very erroneous ideas as to the 

 damage done by some of the more common birds 

 with which he is familiar. Several years ago I 

 knew of a farmer living near Chicago who suc- 

 ceeded in driving away a colony of black-crowned 

 night herons nesting in a small swamp oak grove 

 on his farm. He killed a hundred or more birds, 

 under the mistaken belief that they were damaging 

 his crops. Had he taken the trouble to inquire, he 

 would have found that the birds were really a great 

 benefit and advantage to him, because they do no 

 harm to crops but on the contrary they eat many 

 grasshoppers and coleopterous insects and beetles, 



