MARSH HAWK. 399 
or bushes, may have been caused by the presence of dangerous qua- 
drupeds, or their having been more than once disturbed or robbed of 
their eggs or young, when their former nests had been placed on the 
ground. 
Many birds of this species breed before they have obtained their 
full plumage. I have several times found a male bird in brown plu- 
mage paired with a female which had eggs; but such a circumstance is 
not singular, for the like occurs in many species of different families. 
I have never met with a nest in situations like those described by some 
European writers as those in which the Hen-harrier breeds; but usu- 
ally on level parts of the country, or flat pieces of land that are some- 
times met with in hilly districts. As I am well aware, however, that 
birds adapt the place and even the form and materials of their nests to 
cireumstances, I cannot admit that such a difference is by any means 
sufficient to prove that birds similar in all other respects, are really diffe- 
rent from each other. If it be correct, as has been stated, that the male of 
the European bird deserts the female, as soon as incubation commences, 
this mdeed would form a decided difference’; but as such a habit has 
not been observed in any other Hawk, it requires to be confirmed. 
Our Marsh Hawks, after being paired, invariably keep together, and 
labour conjointly for the support of their family, until the young are 
left to shift for themselves. This is equally the case with every Hawk 
with which I am acquainted. 
Having considerable doubts as to whether any American writer who 
has spoken of the Marsh Hawk ever saw one of its nests, I will here 
describe one found on Galveston Island by my son Joun Woopnouse, 
and carefully examined by him as well as by my friend Epwarp Harris 
and myself. As is usually the case when in a low and flat district, this 
was placed about a hundred yards from a pond, on the ground, upon a 
broom-sedge ridge, about two feet above the level of the surrounding 
salt marsh. It was made of dry grass, and measured between seven 
and eight inches in its internal diameter, with a depth of two inches 
and a half, while its external diameter was twelve inches. The grass 
was pretty regularly and compactly disposed, especially in the interior, 
on which much care seemed to have been bestowed. No feathers or 
other materials had been used in its construction, not even a twig. 
The eggs were four, smooth, considerably rounded, or broadly ellipti- 
cal, bluish-white, an inch and three-quarters in length, an inch and a 
