THE OOLOGIST. 



108 



Hawks, although the Rough-leg 

 which is merely a transient is slight- 

 ly larger, The Red-tail arrive iu Feb- 

 ruary and they are here iu full force 

 •by the first of March. The birds ap- 

 pear to be mated before their arrival 

 ami are therefore read}' to enter at once 

 upon uestiug duties. I feel well satis- 

 fied that the same birds consort year 

 after year, and believe that this feature 

 ■obtains in the case of all birds of prey. 

 There is more or less soaring and 

 screaming done by the birds soon after 

 their arrival, but this seems simply a 

 seasonal feature, aud in a week or so 

 it is over and the eyries are taken 

 possession of by their old occupants. 

 That the nests are occupied year after 

 .year seems almost incontrovertible. 

 There are several evidences which 

 point to this, the strongest of which is 

 that feature of proof first suggested by 

 Mr. B. F. Syke of Kalamazoo. He is a 

 first-class collector of Hawks' eggs, and 

 in his annual raid on the Buteos 1 nests, 

 •discovered that the females usually 

 laid eggs which were colored and 

 marked much the same from year to 

 year. In several instances where eggs 

 were found which were nearly without 

 marks, strongly and again peculiarly 

 marked, observations were taken and 

 the following season the set in the iden- 

 tical nest would be found to possess 

 the characteristic markings as of old. 

 The same feature has been repeatedly 

 observed by others in southern. Mich- 

 igan, and Mr. Willhelm has studied the 

 ■eggs so carefully that in the case of one 

 pair of Hawks, which he robbed, and 

 which then left the nest, he identified 

 the original pair of birds by the eggs 

 in the second nest which he found a 

 ■half-mile from the first, and nearly a 

 month later. 



In the case of those birds which have 

 an old nesting site, the additional mater- 

 ial required to repair ir for the season 

 is but slight, and requires but a very 

 few days, The nests which are occu- 



pied from year to year, are often very 

 bulky affairs aud may reach a diameter 

 of twenty-eight inches or even more, 

 while from top to bottom they are 

 sometimes all of twenty-four inches. 

 It takes quite ten days for a pair of 

 Hawks to build a new nest aud I have 

 known a pair which had been robbed 

 and driven away to occupy fully two 

 weeks in finishing a new nest. Some 

 birds build a large structure and again 

 a nest will be found which is less than 

 half the usual size. 



The nests are nearly always placed 

 in some large crotch, often the main 

 one, in white or black oaks, more often 

 the former, but are rarely found iu 

 hickory trees. Still I have known this 

 buzzard to build in a shag-bark hickory. 

 On lower land the favorite tree is the 

 beech, but not rarely an ash, elm, 

 maple or bass wood is chosen. We 

 found one nest in a giant sycamore, in 

 which were several nests of the Great 

 Blue Heron. The Hawk evidently 

 made their selection a matter of con- 

 venience in order to feed on the young 

 Herons. Gigantic timber oaks are 

 sometimes selected, and these trees 

 very often prove too massive for some 

 oologists to shin. 



The nests are composed largely of 

 sticks often quite an inch in diameter 

 and over two feet long. Smaller sticks 

 and twigs are placed above and the 

 whole is more or less mixed in with 

 pieces of bark and weed stalks. I have 

 found tussocks of grass in the mass and 

 once found an old mullein stalk in the 

 structiu-e This pile is dislodged by 

 the hand quite easily, but it presents an 

 impervious barrier from the ground to 

 the shot gun, and fifty charges fired 

 into it would not materially phase it. 



On the top of this oddly shaded nest 

 is a shallow depression which is gener- 

 ally scantily lined with inner bark 

 strippings, and occasionally with diy 

 green moss. This faint hollow genei/- 

 ally contains two eggs for a complete 



