276 WILD WINGS 



from a distance in the pines. Then I drove home with the 

 eggs in a raging, late, wet snowstorm, cold, white, but not 

 " white-washed." 



Usually these hawks are silent and retiring when their 

 nesting haunts are invaded, but on occasion they can be 

 very vociferous. A pair once advanced to meet me, as I went 

 through a grove in East Taunton, Massachusetts, one twenty- 

 fifth of May, flitting from tree to tree and scolding at me with 

 all their might. Suddenly they disappeared. There were a 

 dozen old nests about, and I could not decide which to climb 

 to, so I withdrew for a while. I went farther than I intended, 

 and it was nearly dark when I got back. It was not until 

 I rapped the very last tree that the hawk whirred off into 

 the gathering gloom. There was the nest fifty feet from the 

 ground, up a slender pine that had no limbs, save rotten stubs, 

 until one almost reached the nest. I confess I dreaded the 

 climb alone there in the dusk, but I made it, and found five 

 big, dirty eggs, well incubated, the second set of Cooper's that 

 I had discovered that day. 



It was with the Cooper's Hawk that I first made de- 

 monstration of the fact that the wildest hawk can be photo- 

 graphed upon the nest, if sufficient time be taken, and proper 

 methods used. It is hard enough to photograph a hawk's 

 nest from an insecure perch in a lofty tree, but it is as 

 nothing compared with doing so when the adult bird is 

 upon it. 



In the present instance I found a new nest in a hemlock 

 tree, in some mixed woodland, forty-two feet from the ground. 

 After the eggs had all been laid for some days, I began work 

 by nailing up low in a near-by tree a small box with a round 

 hole in one end and a cloth over it, in rude imitation of 

 a camera. The hawk was so shy that she would fly even 

 before I came within sight of the nest. I gave her about 



