288 WILD WINGS 



Hawk, when closely approached, also started from her nest, 

 with three newly hatched young, clad in yellowish down, and 

 three eggs not yet hatched. Across on the opposite shore of 

 the pond, not a quarter of a mile away, we put up another 

 Marsh Hawk from six half-incubated eggs. 



A few days later, the third of June, we had a wonderful 

 experience with the Marsh Hawks. Driving eight miles from 

 camp, we searched two closely adjoining sloughs, in all a ter- 

 ritory about a mile square. Not to speak of numerous ducks' 

 nests, and others, we began by flushing a Marsh Hawk, 

 about ten yards from us. Her odd family consisted of two 

 young, three normal eggs and one small runt, six in all. 

 Shortly after this, one of my companions, coming out into 

 the slough to see a Sora's nest that I had found, discovered 

 another Marsh Hawks' home in the meadow grass where 

 there was a little water. It held six young and was necessarily 

 quite a structure, measuring eighteen inches in height and 

 thirty across. Plodding out into the next slough, another 

 Marsh Hawk made some fuss over a nest I did not take the 

 trouble to hunt up. At the farther end of this slough I found 

 two more nests, only a few rods apart, the first with six eggs, 

 the other with four young and an addled egg. As we 

 drove home, the dogs, ranging out on the prairie, started still 

 another hawk from its scant nest in a little depression, with 

 four eggs. I took pictures of several of the nests, and, all in 

 all, it was preeminently a Marsh Hawk day. 



A fine, striking raptor of the prairie is the Ferruginous 

 Rough-legged Hawk. No one can well mistake it, with its 

 light breast and white tail, as it soars about. In disposition 

 it seems much like the Swainson's Hawk, being rather quiet 

 and not particularly shy, though it is a very solitary bird, and 

 retires more and more into the wilder parts as the country 

 becomes settled. Like the Swainson's, it builds large nests on 



