46 



Bird -Lore 



eared Owl trying to swallow his little five-days-old brother ; why 

 might not, then, a fledgling Marsh Hawk turn cannibal ? 



The photographing of the above remarkable nest gave new and 

 beautiful emphasis to a matter of incubation-economics that I have 

 observed in this region, as an absolutely uniform fact, with the 



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NEST AND EGG, AND MARSH HAWKS ABOUT ONE TO FOUR DAYS OLD 



Photographed from nature by E G Tabor, Meridian, N. Y, 



Bobolink, the Meadowlark and the Marsh Hawk : but to which I 

 have yet never seen attention drawn by any writer or observer. This 

 fact was the more interesting in that I did not notice how carefully 

 the eggs were arranged to secure greatest uniformity of heating from 

 the mother's body until the negative had been developed. 



In this region all the species noted above lay, normally, six 

 eggs, and these eggs I have invariably found arranged in two rows 

 of three each. In case of the Bobolinks and Meadowlarks, the two 

 rows are always 'in line' with the entrances, and these birds, when 

 observed on the nest, were always sitting with their heads peering 

 out over their door-steps. In case of the nest of eight eggs 

 noted above, it will be seen from the illustration that two of the 

 eggs lie, each, in the junction between the sets of four that lie 

 nearest together. What a startling revelation, by the way, might 

 be made should some future development of X-ray photography 

 make it possible for one to photograph, for instance, a Sora Rail, 

 sitting on her sixteen eggs in one of our northern marshes ? 



When once the eggs of the Marsh Hawk begin to hatch— and 



