60 American Birds 



the sun coming from the right direction. The trouble 

 came in focusing the instrument One hundred and twenty 

 feet is not such a dizzy height when you stand on the 

 ground and look up, but it is different when you strap 

 yourself to the limb of a tree and dangle out backward 

 over the brink. No matter how strong the rope, there's 

 a feeling of death creeping up and down every nerve in 

 your body the first time you try it. 



The eggs of some hawks differ widely in marking, 

 but the two we found in the cottonwood year after year 

 were always of a bluish-white tint with pale lavender shell 

 markings. In her period of housekeeping the mother 

 seemed to understand the changes of season. She cradled 

 her eggs about the last week of March, before the trees 

 had leaved out, so that during the time of incubation 

 she had a clear view of the surrounding country. When 

 the hawklets were hatched and she had to go back and 

 forth carrying them food, and when the young began to 

 move about in the nest and peek over the edge, they were 

 well protected from a view below as well as from the sun 

 and rain above by the thick surrounding foliage. 



The red-tail is often called " chicken-hawk," but he 

 does not deserve the name. Many of the hawks carry 

 reputations that they do not deserve. Often people who 

 live in the country are enemies of the hawks and owls 

 and shoot them at every opportunity, because they think 

 the hawk is the persistent foe of poultry, whereas this 

 is a very small part of his diet. In regions and in seasons 

 when animal and insect food is scarce this hawk may catch 

 chickens and game birds, but it lives mostly on mice and 

 shrews as well as frogs, snakes, lizards, and insects of vari- 



