THE SHARP-SHINNED HAWK. 397 



Not only are the Marsh Hawks wedded for life, but the male is very 

 devoted to his family. He assists in nest building, shares the duty of incu- 

 bation, and is assiduous in providing for his brooding mate. During the 

 last week in April or the first week of May a nesting site is selected, usually 

 in the tall grass adjoining a swamp. If the ground is wet, sticks are first 

 laid down, but otherwise only grass, dead leaves, and weed-stems, with a 

 little hair and moss or feathers, are used to build up a low platform, broad 

 and slightly hollowed on top. Here four or five eggs are commonly laid, 

 but six is not unusual, and two sets of eight are recorded, one from Washing- 

 ton and one from Iowa. In the former state I once found a nest on the 

 ground in a little opening of a poplar grove, the birds having probably retired 

 to the woods to avoid the winds prevalent at that season. 



Incubation is accomplished in about three weeks, or if it has commenced 

 with the laying of the first egg, as is often the case, then the last egg may 

 not hatch for a week longer. While the female is brooding the young, she 

 is frequently fed by the male from a considerable height. Mr. Lynds Jones 

 relates one such instance where an element of sportiveness seemed to enter 

 in : "Once during the breeding season I saw a male catch a large garter 

 snake and fly up with it several hundred feet, then drop it to the female who 

 just then came flying along near the ground; she caught and carried it 

 to the nest, followed by the male." 



The young after leaving the nest hunt for several months with their 

 parents, and the last and costliest lesson which they learn is fear of man. If 

 these most excellent mousers had half the gratitude shown them which we 

 manifest to cats, they might be abundant where they are now rare. Doubt- 

 less some scores of pairs, all told, might be mustered within the state, but I 

 have record of only three specific instances of their nesting. 



No. 177. 



SHARP-SHINNED HAWK. 



A. O. U. No. 332. Accipiter velox (Wils.). 



Description. Adult : Above slaty gray, dark plumbeous, or chocolate- 

 brown, with a glaucous cast, darker but not black on head; occipital feathers, 

 scapulars, and inner quills with concealed white at base ; primaries banded with 

 two shades of fuscous above, contrasting dusky and whitish below; tail, nearly 

 square, slightly emarginate, crossed by five dusky bands, and narrowly whitish at 

 tip, the basal band concealed and nearly obsolete ; auriculars rusty, with black 

 shaft-lines; throat whitish or pale buffy with blackish shafts; remaining- under 

 parts white, heavily barred on breast, belly, sides, axillaries, and shanks with 

 pale cinnamon-rufous, feathers of breast with blackish shaft-lines; lining of 



