456 BIRDS OF ILLINOIS. 



The extent of Individual variation in tbis species, tliougli very considerable, is limited 

 by tlie terms of the above Uiuguosis. 



This bold marauder is a common resident in all wooded portions 

 of the State. Its habits and more prominent characteristics cannot 

 be better described than in the following, by "J. M. W." in the 

 Ornithologist and OiJlogist for December, 1881, pp. 73, 74. 



"Before transcribing my notes on the breeding habits of the viva- 

 cious little Sharp-shinned Hawk, we must pay our compliments to 

 its larger congener. Indeed through the season it forces itself upon 

 our notice m so many ways, and with such persistence, that we are 

 obliged to respect its prior claims. When we go into the leafless 

 woods, during the first week in April, for our earliest set of Buteos, 

 the Cooper's Hawks are ah-eady paired and apparently ready to 

 begin housekeeping. They feign alarm at our approach to the old 

 haunts, and following us, scold us well as we go from nest to nest. 

 But as usual with the sex when house-hunting, the females are 

 capricious and not easily suited. The old home, though in good 

 repair, is perhaps in a neighborhood where callers are too free, and 

 ample time must be taken to choose a new tenement. 



"Then again about the twenty-fifth of April, when we once more 

 climb to our Buteos, hoping for a second clutch, we are surprised 

 to find the first egg of a Cooper which has taken possession of this 

 ready-furnished abode. The second week in May they are breeding 

 commonly, and by the first of June they are so abundant here as 

 to outnumber all the other Eaptores. They wall breed in old nests 

 in the same low situations in hemlocks and young pines as the 

 Sharp-shinned Hawk, but they frequent as well the taU deciduous 

 woods, and I have taken eggs from dizzy heights on outlying prongs, 

 away above the loftiest forks of the Buteos. Very rarely ^1 . cooperl 

 selects a new and unused site, but as a rule old nests are used, and 

 often on a pile of rubbish in a crotch they will rear a very large 

 superstructure. If the forks of the tree go up a Httle way without 

 divergence, the pair will work for weeks and raise the nest three or 

 four feet until it is bulkier than the home of any of our local 

 rapacice except the Fishhawk. I know to-day where there are three 

 such old Cooper's nests which are piled so high with brush that 



