THE OOLOQISt 



23 



ing he made his way up from ledge 

 to ledge, until at last he was on top. 

 Gratefully he threw himself down to 

 rest after this thrilling experience. 



The nest was a shallow affair, mere- 

 ly a scouping out of a "place" among 

 the broken rocks. Two of the eggs 

 are in the collection of Prof. H. H. 

 Beck of Franklin, Pa., and two occu- 

 py a place of honor in the collection 

 of the writer. The rich coloring mat- 

 ter so lavishly spread over the surface 

 of the first three eggs deposited, seems 

 to have nearly given out, for the 

 fourth shows the creamy white ground 

 color with much fainter painting of 

 reddish brown. 



This locality is the same as that 

 given by Dr. Detwiler in Bendire's 

 "Life Histories of North American 

 Birds."* Evidently the birds are 

 much less common now than then. 

 There are undoubted records of its 

 having nested on the cliffs of the Sus-' 

 quehanna River in Pennsylvania, but 

 whether any sets have been taken in 

 recent years I have not learned. Ben- 

 dire's supposition that the Duck Hawk 

 breeds in Georgia, Alabama, or Ten- 

 nessee lacks, as far as I have been able 

 to inquire, any confirmation whatever. 

 Years ago it was reported by Mr. B. 

 T. Gault on the Sandstone Bluffs of 

 Little Red River in Cleburne County, 

 Arkansas. Who knows whether it 

 breeds anywhere in the Mississippi 

 Valley today? 



* See p. 293 Seg. 



The Red-shouldered Hawk, a Summer 

 Resident in Greene County, Pa. 

 Although nesting in certain of our 

 eastern and northern counties and 

 parts of eastern Ohio, the Red-should- 

 er Hawk must be considered a rare 

 summer resident in Greene County, 

 Pennsylvania. Previous to a single in- 

 stance of its nesting, which I shall 

 here mention, no nests to my knowl- 

 edge have been discovered. 



Late in April a couple of years since, 

 I happened to be out for a tramp only 

 two miles distant from Waynesburg, 

 and upon entering a small woods, 

 which was situated on the side of one 

 of the hills forming a deep, narrow 

 hollow, I remembered having seen an 

 old Hawk"s nest a few weeks previous. 

 At once I made my way toward the 

 tree containing the nest, which was 

 a rather tall, leaning white oak (Quer- 

 cus alba) standing at the top of one 

 bank of a ravine and at the lower 

 edge of the woods. Upon procuring a 

 satisfactpry view oi^the nest a pecu- 

 liar i^r^ijection cbtild be seen libove its 

 j.gim. This projection. , proved to be 

 *fhe head of a hawk, the bird sailing 

 away from' the nest as I approached. 

 ^ 1, of bourse, "suspected the nest to 

 belong to a Red-tailed Hawk, and put- 

 ting my climbers on, slowly ascended 

 the tree. As I neared the nest both 

 the male and- fei»a.le Hawks sailed 

 above me and soon settled on the high- 

 er branches of an oak situated at the 

 upper edge of the woods. Here they 

 screamed in a peculiar way, and I 

 wondered at such cries from a Red- 

 tailed Hawk. Hurriedly I clfmbed to- 

 ward the nest, and with much excite- 

 ment, looked o.v«f the rim upon three 

 bluish white eggs which were some- 

 what spotted with dark browh. These 

 lay japon a lining consisting? of bits 

 of corn-stalk, strips of grai>e-vine bark. 

 The nest, upon meaeuremen^.'was 

 found to be 60 feet above the- ground. 



The eggs, I thought, were rather 

 small for Red-tail's so I compared them 

 with .50 eggs of the latter species in 

 my collection and found them much 

 smaller. Not being satisfied with 

 this proof, I sent them to several of 

 our foremost Oologists, among them 

 Mr. Barnes, editor of THE OOLOGIST, 

 and each pronounced them eggs, of 

 Buteo 1. lineatus. 



S. S. Dickey. 

 Washington, Pa, 



