THE O. & O. SEMI-ANNUAL. 5 
As a personal reminiscence is always in order, I will close this 
article by recounting my experience for the present season in the 
search for a series of sets. 
April 28th was the time I had fixed upon as about the proper 
date to find the lay complete, and at noon of this day, having 
made all my sick calls, I threw dull care to the wind, and, ac- 
companied by my twelve-year-old son, started out for an afternoon 
of it. We carried with us collecting box, a sharp hatchet,.a ball 
of string and climbers. Thus equipped, we made rapid strides 
for a tract of large timber, on the river, three miles below the 
town. 
This bit of forest of an hundred acres or more has not yet felt 
the devastating and destroying hand of man, and has remained al- 
most in its pristine beauty. Here in the beautiful springtime, 
when nature is donning her finest wardrobe, budding trees, bloom- 
ing fléwers, the rippling river, and song of birds, I have whiled 
away many an happy hour in the intense enjoyment that can on- 
ly be felt by one thoroughly in love with nature and all her crea- 
tures. Back from the river’s bank, a forest of walnut, elm and 
ash formed a dense shade for the Easter lilies, ox-eye daisies and 
touch-me-nots that carpeted the earth beneath. Nearer the water 
a fringe of silver-leafed maples, while at the river’s edge, in their 
drooping grace and rhythmic response to every passing breeze, 
the willows dipped their graceful branches to the water’s edge. 
Towering far above all were the great sycamores and cotton- 
woods, mighty giants of a by-gone age, standing like colossal 
sentinels over the surrounding forest, so straight and unbending 
that no convulsions of nature seemed to have disturbed them. In 
these grand trees were to be found the objects of search, the nests 
of the Sparrow Hawk. Here many pairs of them nest every 
season. No trouble to locate the nests, but to get to them, almost 
among the clouds, was no easy matter. 
In a few minutes we had rapped a female Sfarverius from an 
old Flicker hole, up a hundred feet or more, in a ‘‘syc” four or 
five feet through. As the sap-sprouts put out almost from the 
ground up, the ascent was made without much difficulty and five 
eggs were secured. 
The next find was in a cottonwood, with not a limb for fifty 
feet. I did not care to trust my 187 lbs. to the rough bark while 
