THK 081'KKY. 89 



interspersed thickly with reddish brown feathers; the back and runip were 

 covered with black feathers edged with brown, while the under tail coverts 

 were of salmon color. The twelve tail feathers were black, tipped with whit*; 

 the primaries were black, tipped with white, while the tips of the secondaries 

 were brown. The feet were yellow, and the eyes milky brown. The bird 

 measured 12 inches from tip of bill tc tip of tail, and 2G inches 

 from tip to tip of wings. The stomach contained nothing but a quantity of 

 cicadas and horseflies. 



A few days after, while walking through a clearing, I noticed a nest in an 

 inaccessible cottonwood tree; I examined it from the ground, and later, by 

 mounting a stump, I obtained a good view of the nest and saw two young birds 

 gazing over its edge. Sticks and clods of dirt soon brought the parent birds 

 and five or six more additional Kites, all of which circled about with the ex- 

 ception of one which lit on the nest. 



Two days after, shouldering my axe and my gun, 1 made my way to the 

 clearing. Once there the task seemed a big one; the tree was over two feet 

 and a half in diameter, but after an hour and a half I had the satisfaction of 

 seeing the big fellow come crashing to the ground; "two more immature speci- 

 mens for my collection'', I thought, as I hurried toward the topmost branches, 

 but investigation proved that the nest was empty and, as no old birds were 

 about, I decided the young had left the day previous. The nest was a mass 

 of sticks lined with cottonwood down and green willow leaves. Taking my 

 gun I measured the tree and the nest; reducing this to feet, I found that the 

 tree had been one hundred and thirty-one feet high and the nest at the height of 

 one hundred and nineteen feet. One would imagine that with Kites so numerous, 

 nests could be found quite plentifully. This is not so, however; the principal 

 reason, perhaps, is that the nesting only commences in the summer, at which 

 time the leaves have grown so dense that it is almost impossible to see any nest 

 situated far from the ground. Another reason is that they show a great prefer- 

 ence for the tip-top branches of gum and cottonwood trees whose dense foliage 

 is almost impenetrable to the eye. 



Of all the nests which I have examined only one was found to contain 

 more than a single egg or yonng, although other writers mention two as an 

 average, and sometimes three. The ground color from the outside seems to 

 be white tinged with bluish, but if an egg is held up to a strong light and 

 looked at through the blow hole, the color is a deep blue. As for the markings, 

 I am convinced that the creamy splashes are not nest stains but are character- 

 istic of the eggs. 



I will refrain from a description of the old birds, but the principal 

 measurements of three skins now in my collection may interest some; the 



