24 



THE OOLOGIST 



Hawks' Eggs. 



Having had no opportunity to do any 

 collecting for nearly six months, I 

 welcomed the chance to go out in the 

 woods a few Saturday afternoons as 

 the time drew near for the Red-should- 

 ered Hawks to return here in the early 

 spring. 



On April 4, 1914, I found that the 

 Red-shoulders had arrived for I saw 

 three on this date. Two pairs soon 

 settled for the season in a couple of 

 wood-lots, perhaps a mile apart. 



After watching one pair carefully 

 for five weeks, on May 9, I collected a 

 full set of three eggs, partly incu- 

 bated, from their nest in a white pine 

 tree. The nest was about fifty feet 

 from the ground in a fork of the upper 

 branches, and was composed of twigs 

 and bark, lined with soft cedar bark, 

 a few downy feathers, and a few green 

 sprays of red cedar and pitch pine. 



The eggs were heavily marked with 

 dark brown, much darker than is 

 usual with eggs of this species found 

 near here. They measured 2.25x1.78, 

 2.26x1.83, 2.18x1.79. The other pair 

 of hawks gave me a lot of trouble be- 

 fore I finally got their eggs. 



I first saw them April 4, in a wood- 

 lot near a thickly settled part of the 

 town, just in the rear of a private san- 

 atorium belonging to Dr. F. E. Park, 

 one of our leading physicians. Fortu- 

 nately for me the doctor himself hap- 

 pens to be a well known nature stu- 

 dent, and he willingly gave me per- 

 mission to go over the Sanitarium 

 grounds and take both the eggs and 

 the hawks themselves if I wished to. 



April 11 I saw one of the hawks 

 there but could find no nest. 



April 18 I heard a Red-shoulder yel- 

 ling so I approached the pines; and I 

 found a typical egg of this species 

 measuring 2.13x167 lying on the 

 ground among some dry oak leaves. It 

 is not unusual to find an egg of some 



common small bird which has been 

 prematurely dropped near a favorite 

 feeding ground, but this is the first 

 time that I ever found the egg of any 

 hawk under such circumstances. It 

 was slightly cracked, but it makes a 

 good looking specimen nevertheless. 



A careful search in the scattering 

 pines soon revealed a new nest in a 

 white pine tree about fifty yards from 

 where I found the egg. This nest 

 closely resembled a Red-shoulder's ex- 

 cept that the lining lacked the green 

 twigs of evergreen which for some rea- 

 son the hawks generally use. 



April 25, I visited the nest but no 

 eggs had been laid. However I saw 

 one of the hawks near it so I went 

 back again on May 2, but found it still 

 empty. This time I saw one of the 

 hawks fly out of the grove so I care- 

 fully searched the trees around there, 

 and climbed up to two other nests 

 which proved to be old ones of previ- 

 ous years. But on the way home, I 

 collected a fine adult male Sharp-shin- 

 ned Hawk, so I felt repaid for my 

 trouble. 



May 9, I visited the nest and found 

 that the owners had evidently desert- 

 ed it, for another new nest had been 

 built in a pitch pine within ten feet of 

 the nest which I had been watching. 

 Neither nest contained any eggs but 

 the pair of Red-shoulders were still 

 around there. 



May 16, I went there again and I 

 saw the black tail feathers of a crow 

 protruding from the nest in the pitch 

 pine. 



Thoroughly disgusted I drove the 

 crow off and climbed up and found 

 three eggs. I understood then that I 

 had been fooled from the start by the 

 similarity of the crow's nest to the one 

 of the Red-shoulders which I had found 

 May 9. But I had no time to spare 

 so I returned home, mentally vowing 

 to try again some other time. 



