BIRDS OF KANSAS. 249 



sippi Kites appeared and also joined in the circling flights. It 

 was a beautiful and, to me, exciting sight to watch their various 

 motions and coquetting evolutions, sailing high in the air, swoop- 

 ing down with partially-closed wings, skimming along the prairie, 

 lost for a moment in the woods, ascending in spiral flights, 

 gliding from slow to swift and swift to slow, without a flit or 

 break, like Swallows. For grace and symmetry of action I 

 would rank them first among the aerial birds, attaching the blue 

 ribbon to the Swallow-tailed. Unfortunately, I was called away 

 on the 8th, and did not return until the 18th. At first I thought 

 the birds had left, but I soon occasionally noticed one here and 

 there flying low down and often disappearing in the tree tops. 

 I lost no time, but hastened, with glass and gun in hand, for the 

 timber embraced in their former flights, and in a short time had 

 the pleasure of finding a pair of the Swallow-tailed Kites build- 

 ing a nest in the top of a large hickory tree, the nest being 

 about two-thirds completed; by cautiously approaching and ly- 

 ing down behind a fallen tree, I was enabled to watch them 

 unobserved, and, with the aid of the glass, to plainly see them 

 at their work. When either came to the nest alone with a stick, 

 it would place it hurriedly upon the nest, but when both met at 

 the nest they would at once commence fussing about, pulling at 

 the sticks and trying to arrange the material, first one getting 

 upon the nest and then the other, turning around as if trying to 

 fit a place for the bodies. I think at one time they must have 

 worked at least ten minutes trying to weave in or place in a sat- 

 isfactory manner a stripping from the inner bark of the cotton- 

 wood. As builders they are not a success. 



Their nests are placed in the small branches near the tops of 

 tall trees, composed of sticks loosely interwoven, and lined 

 sparingly with the soft, ribbon-like strippings from the inner 

 bark of decaying or dead cottonwood trees. Eggs usually two 

 (I have never found more; according to Audubon, four to six; 

 and Capt. Chas. Bendire reports the finding of four in a nest), 

 1.87x1.50; cream white, irregularly spotted and blotched with 

 dark reddish brown, running often largely together towards 

 small end; in form, rather oval. 



