264 GEOLOGICAL SURVEY OF CANADA. 
hills and south to Milk river. It was common in the West Butte 
and along St. Mary river north of the 49th parallel. It seems to be 
purely a prairie species, not being recorded from the Saskatchewan. 
One was shot by me at Aweme, Man. They are doubtless over- 
looked and taken for the rough-legged hawk. (Criddle.) A rare 
breeding species but possibly increasing in number in Manitoba. The 
first specimen recorded was taken north of Portage la Prairie, May 
7th, 1898. It was an immature female and is still in my collection. 
Travelling west, however, in 1906, we came into the regular range 
of the species just west of Yorkton, Sask., and from that point to 
Edmonton it was regularly and commonly noted. (Atkinson.) 
BREEDING NoTES.—A pair was seen at Indian Head, Sask., on 
1st May, 1892. On 16th I shot a fine female that had a nest in a 
dead poplar about twelve feet from the ground. The nest was made 
of sticks and lined with dry grass and contained five eggs. Another 
nest in live poplar had the same number of eggs and was lined with 
the inner bark of dead poplar. This bird was tolerably common all 
summer. In May and June, 1894, a number of nests were found in 
box elder (Negundo aceroides) at Medicine Hat, Crane lake, and 
along Skull creek, and in the Cypress hills. In the summer of 1895, 
they were found breeding in the same situation. I have found 
their nests in poplar, cottonwood, box elder, upon “‘cut banks”’ 
(clay cliffs) of streams, and upon clay domes in the ‘‘bad lands’”’ 
south of Wood mountain. In the spring of 1894 one pair built a 
nest upon the tower of a windmill at Langevin on the C. P. Ry. west 
of Medicine Hat. It had to be taken down, however, as it inter- 
fered with the working of the mill. The highest nest I have seen was 
not more than thirty feet from the ground. Nests were always near 
water, but I think that this is more because the cut banks and trees 
are usually along the streams and not for any preference that they 
have for it. On rith June, 1894, took two nests at Crane lake, 
Sask. Both contained young ones. The nests were very large. 
One was built of sticks and cow dung lined with dry grass; the other 
of sticks alone lined with dry grass. The young are white when first 
hatched. Their chief food is gophers, of which I have seen a number 
in the nests, as well as at the foot of the tree or bank where the nest 
was. (Spreadborough.) Breeding in large. trees in timber and in 
isolated trees along creeks in western Saskatchewan. (A.C. Bent.) 
