i84 THE CONDOR Vol. IX 



there was Harry carelessly climbing the four-foot-wide crest of the hollow, with a 

 coil of rope in either hand! The big climbing rope remained stubbornly kinky. 

 While I untwisted its two-hundred feet of length, Harry sat on the brink above, 

 kicking his heels into eternity, and watching the falcons. Suddenly a shout from 

 him broke the previous gravity of his demeanor: "' She' z g07ie onto her eggs' \ 

 (They were but a short eight feet below him.) 



In curiosity he dropped fragment after fragment of the friable rock down upon 

 the lower margin of the pot-hole; but the stout-hearted Falcon never faltered. Nor 

 did she come gliding out, until I came around, in my rope-adjusting, to her side of 

 the butte. How did she discern me ? 



Three times, as I remember, did she come out, alternately, while I was at 

 work, and then returned, without hesitation, to her eggs. Yet Harry's forehead 

 and hair hung each time but eight feet above her eyrie. After interminable prep- 

 arations Harry was ready for the descent. Two minutes later he was standing up- 

 right on the ledge margin of the pot-hole. The cavity was four feet laterally-deep. 

 At the back of it five eggs lay upon the disintegrated rock. It had been planned 

 to have Harry slide down the two ropes to earth. Having duly greeted the "find" 

 I returned to the opposite side of the butte. There was a safety-rope to be held. 

 But, ere I reached it, there came a shout from Harry: "I'm on top!" And there 

 he stood, agrin. 



The five eggs of 1906 had been laid about April 20 to 30. 'The U. of N. date 

 falls about the first of May. The nesting for 1907, quite strangely for a backward 

 Spring, was earlier. Harry wrote me that when he examined the new eyrie, about 

 the 25th of May, there were half-grown young, three of them in the pocket. "My 

 rope," he added, "was five feet too short; but it did not matter." There was fair 

 evidence that our falcons had nested again, in June of 1906. The University 

 record and Harry's note for the current year make at apparent that five eggs are 

 probably unusual for this pair of Falcons. 



I have cited one warning note of the Falcons. It will be intelligible, I fear, to 

 none but myself. There are two other cries that might be written down: a rattling, 

 "Kr-r-r-r", with rising intonation; and a peevish, whining "kruk". This I find 

 compared in my note book to a noise made occasionally by_ flickers, or to one call of 

 the guinea hen. 



The prairie Falcon (7^«/cc» «z^A'/crtw?^5)may be considered as fairly common in the 

 butte and the canyon regions of northwestern Nebraska. I found them rare in north- 

 eastern Wyoming; tho there was indeed, a pair that nested somewhere in the vicinity 

 of Sundance Mountain. This pair arrived, usually, about the 10th or 12th of April. 

 As is well-known, this Falcon is a terror to poultry. This menace is in no sense 

 confined to the period of family-rearing. While passing thru Sidney, Nebraska, 

 on September 6, I found, strung upon the wires of a hen-ranch fence about a dozen 

 hawks that had fallen victims to the ranch-mans 's gun, either thru their own 

 malice i>rei>ense or because of their fatal similarity to injurious hawks. With two 

 or three Sparrow Hawks, a Red-tail or two, and a young male Marsh Hawk were a 

 predominance of Prairie Falcons. The most of these were normal juveniles. One 

 was a mature bird. But the one that caught my sight at once was what I might 

 call a melano-erythristic juvenile. This was a bird of rare beauty; and keen indeed, 

 was my regret that the bird was utterly rotten. Only the tail and wings could be 

 saved. It is quite probable that these unusual color-phases, in both extremes, are 

 quite commoner than even the savants would have us believe. As for albinism, 

 however, the writer is inclined to believe Mr. Cameron in error (see The ^uk, 

 July, 1907) in believing that the Swainson Hawk normally blanches with age. I 

 have never seen but one such (in Kansas, May, 1907); yet I have seen many melan- 

 ists. Moreover, Mr. Cameron has seen hundreds of normals to my one; yet he, by 

 his own admission (loc. cit. ) , has never seen but two blanched Swainson Hawks ! 



Blue jRapids, Kansas. 



