40 THE NIDOLOGIST 
Aside from the nesting spots being similar 
in general, the habits of the two species in 
some other respects are strikingiy alike. I 
have had occasion many times to note the 
close companionship between male and 
female of both species, extending not only 
through the breeding season but apparently 
up to the time of migration at least, and, 
as has been suggested by other observers, 
perhaps through life. I have never dis- 
covered a nest of either species at anv stage 
of its building or use afterward that was 
not closely attended by both members of 
the pair, and in the case of the Owl, of 
some seven nests taken this year, I did not 
once flush the bird from the nest without 
first, or soon afterward, flushing the mate 
very close at hand, and late last fall I 
jumped a pair from a roosting place together 
under a couple of stalks of milkweed on 
the open prairie, near a big slough, and 
there was every evidence at and about the 
spot that the pair had practically adopted 
it fora home, though it was plainly nota 
nesting site. 
In the case of the Marsh Hawk this close 
association is only less marked. I have 
been able repeatedly to locate a nest ap- 
proximately by closely watching the opera- 
tions of the male and noting his reluctance 
to wander outsidea certain radius, and late 
in September I have come upon both parent 
birds piloting about a full family of young, 
apparently full-fledged and well able to 
care for themselves, and at a time when 
the families of other species had become 
permanently scattered. 
The two species I have found strikingly 
alike in another respect. Ifa nest of either 
contains an incomplete set and is ap- 
proached close enough for discovery, even 
though it may not be actually touched, it is 
promptly abandoned by the pair. This has 
been my observation in every case where 
incubation of the full set had not com- 
menced. In the latter part of May last, 
while driving on the open prairie near a 
small sheet of surface water, I flushed a 
Short-eared Owl from the long dry grass, 
and some twenty feet away, and almost at 
the same instant, its mate left her nest con- 
taining two fresh eggs. From my seat in 
the cart the nest could be plainly seen, and 
knowing the propensity of the species to 
abandon, I turned my horse quickly aside 
and quit the locality entirely, not returning 
fora week. But I doubt if the pair had 
even revisited the spot after being dis- 
turbed, for the eggs, still fresh and wholly 
unstained, were together with the nest, — 
cold and wet. 
A few days later, after closely watching 
a male Marsh Hawk for fully half an hour 
and coming to a definite conclusion as to 
the proper spot to_be searched, I walked - 
straight to a clump of greasewood brush of 
an average height of two feet, and, peering 
in from the edge but not approaching 
nearer, flushed the female from her newly — 
completed nest, containing one clean, fresh 
egg. On my next visit, eight days later, 
there was no change whatever in the situa- 
tion, except that the pair had wholly de- 
parted! 
But though the two species are some- 
what alike in food and habits, the construc- 
tion of their nests is radically different, 
that of the Owl being generally a trifling, 
careless lining of dried grass, or straws or 
fragments of weeds in a very slight depres- 
sion in the ground, sometimes hardly per- 
ceptible; while the Hawk’s is placed flat 
on the ground and ordinarily well built up, 
from one and a half to five inches in depth, 
of dried grasses, hay, weed stalks and even 
twigs fora foundation where the ground 
underneath is wet and marshy, as is fre- 
quently the case. I have this year taken 
the nest of each, high and dry, on the 
open prairie, fully two hundred yards from 
any water, and I have also taken a nest of 
each in a stretch of breast-high nettles and 
rushes on a marshy strip of land twenty 
yards wide, running out into a dismal 
alkali lake—a selection of nesting spots 
seeming to fully justify the use of the word 
“marsh” in the naming of both. 
As illustrating unusual nesting sites, I 
might mention a nest of the Marsh Hawk 
taken by me at the foot of a small popular 
tree in a trifling grove, along the old lake 
shore; also a flimsy nest of the Short- 
eared Owl containing young in all stages, 
from just hatched to half grown, on a sur- 
veyor’s ‘“‘witness mound” at a section cor- 
ner located in a half flooded stretch of graz- 
ing land. 
Incubation with both species seems to 
commence with the laying of the first egg, 
and a glance into a nest will generally dis- 
tinguish the fresh eggs from those first laid, 
the latter being usually dingy and nest- 
stained. 
The eggs of Accipitrinus that have come 
under my observation, range in color from 
dead-white to lustrous-white, with, some- 
eer 
