Burns—On BroOAD-wWINGED HAWK. 247 
east with a small stick 4 to 6 inches long’, in the same position. 
The species is a very crude builder and prefers to utilize an 
old structure of the crow, hawk, or squirrel, if the situation is 
favorable, rather than build the foundations itself; though not 
infrequently it does so, dropping more or less material at the 
base of the tree. Love for a former home will often influence 
it to return to a former site in a few years, even after every 
vestage of its former nest has disappeared. G. M. Allen 
has recorded a pair at Intervale, N. H., which nested for sev- 
_eral seasons in a large beech. The nest was a high pile of 
sticks, evidently the accumulation of years. Rarely, however, 
it will occupy the nest of the previous year, either using it as 
a foundation for a new structure, or pulling out the old, re- 
line it. F. E. Newberry gives an instance'of a nest of a Red- 
shoulder robbed at East Greenwich, R. I., and a Broad-wing 
taking possession after removing the old lining. The period of 
construction is ofttimes protracted, but too much curiosity 
leads to the desertion of the location and no time of its dur- 
ation can be given. An occupied and newly built nest taken 
by me at Berwyn, May 13, 99, was found ‘to contain the fol- 
lowing material: 20 white oak twigs, 6 to 10 inches long; 26 
chestnut twigs, 4 to 16 inches; 50 chestnut oak twigs, 5 to 16 
inches long and many-branched ; 77 dead sticks probably prin- 
cipally chestnut; 2 chestnut blossoms, 46 chestnut bark scales, 
* 1x2 to 2x6 inches; and a few leaf sprays. It was placed upon 
a foundation consisting of a Crow’s nest, from which it was 
separated. 
Dead sticks, twigs and pieces of bark principally, occasion- 
ally corn husk, bits of moss and live twigs of any easily obtain- 
able variety of tree; lined with a quantity of rough bark scales 
from the trunks of the chestnut, oak, maple, beech, balsam, 
spruce, hemlock, pine or birch, according to locality, only one 
kind being ‘used in a nest; often a few green twigs of the 
spruce, poplar, hemlock, fir or red cedar are added ; more rare- 
ly, strips of inner tree bark, or red cedar, wild grape vine or 
pine bark, or bits of moss, usnea or lichen-covered bark may 
be used ; and in two instances (Mass., N. 1D) pine needles, and 
