The Oologist. 



vol. XI. NO. 5. 



ALBION, N. Y., MAY, 1894. 



Whole No. 103 



My Broadwiugs of '92 and '93 



''Tig-g-e-e-e tig-g-e-e-e 1 ' 1 was the shrill 

 Hawk shriek, that stirred ray blood, 

 one of the first warm days of April, in 

 1892, as I entered a dense belt of timber 

 skirting a noisy swollen creek. The 

 bird swept by me, close at hand, the 

 characteristic markings appearing so 

 plainly that though the bird was a 

 stranger to me, I readily identified it 

 by subsequent mental comparisons of 

 this and other birds with the dried skin 

 of a specimen killed by me in '84 but 

 never identified, my work having lain 

 meanwhile in other fields. 



The previous March I had noted, in a 

 a burr c oak wood amid neighboring 

 fields, a nest which, in its construction 

 and its location, told me that here was 

 the work of some other bird than our 

 common Cooper's Hawk. 



May 15th I visited this wood. The 

 •old nest was vacant but forty rods away 

 in another burr oak I luckily saw, close 

 to the trunk, two-thirds up, and fifteen 

 feet from the ground, the bare skeleton 

 of a coarse stick nest, with suspicious 

 flecks of down clinging to the rough 

 bark. A moment found me looking 

 into its vacant slovenliness, — adorned 

 with naught but a delicate spray of pop- 

 lar in fresh budding leaf. I turned, 

 disgusted, to descend, when that keen, 

 ■characteristic and unique "Tig-g-e-e-e" 

 rang out again. May 21st I reascended 

 the tree. Mamma Latissimus sat near 

 by shrilly scolding. Two exquisite eggs 

 now lay in the rude nest now gaily 

 adorned with leafy tinge. 



This is set I. Two eggs, incuba- 

 tion one-fifth. Egg 1 rounded, covered 

 entirely with lilac spots, the smaller 

 end daubed with dark cinnamon, size 

 1.8x 1,5. Egg 2, oblong, solidly and ex- 

 quisitely marbled with lavender, heav- 



iest at large end where also a few sharp- 

 ly accented cinnamon spots appeared, 

 size 1.9x1.45. 



-Set. II. Leaving, one mile south of 

 O'watonna, the miry highway leading 

 to Bohemia, one dives into the moss be- 

 witching woodlands. The wood road 

 winds river-ward through mazes of 

 black oak and across bits of meadow 

 and on through a quagmire bordering 

 a creek along which stands primeval 

 ashes, oaks and walnuts outposts of a 

 dense wood along the run. The nar- 

 row road' being the only sign of human 

 vandalism. Here, in the Spring of '92, 

 the note of a Broad -wing stopped me as 

 I was hastening river-ward along the 

 wood path, and instantly the bird 

 swept past, with wonderful swiftness, 

 bearing a twig in her claws. Later in 

 the day, at the margin of a field near 

 by I saw a pair of the birds copulating, 

 the male swooping down upon his mate 

 as she rested, lightly in a sapling top. 

 Yes, I vainly though repeatedly sought 

 the nest — finding two old nests of 

 Cooper's, a frequented lair of Scops, 

 but not a sign of my Broad-wings. 



But on May 20, '93, after a very busy 

 day, I hurried my horse and carriage 

 down the wood road, just as sun set; 

 and behold, at the very edge o s f the 

 wood, in a slender elm, that' leaned 

 over the creek bed, in the first limb 

 crotch, 30 feet up, from a fragile nest, I 

 saw, half by accident, the tail of a 

 Hawk projecting. 



It was the nest of '92 relined with 

 twigs and remarkably neat. The eggs 

 are the most delicate in coloring that I 

 have ever taken. Incubation zero to 

 begun. Egg 1, pointed sub-spherical, 

 slightly stippled with bright cinnamon, 

 and at the smaller end a marbling of 

 the same, size l.?6x 1.42. Egg 2, ovate, 

 blotched with lilac mostly at the small 



