3© PROCEEDINGS MANCHESTER INSTITUTE 



The numbers seen season by season vary according as the con- 

 ditions have been favorable or unfavorable for raising young. 

 During the early summer females with broods are not infrequently 

 met upon the mountain paths or along the wooded roads, and in 

 autumn full}' grown broods are sometimes flushed numbering 

 eight to ten birds. On October i, 1903, nine birds were feeding 

 in the early morning in the top of a tall birch in a piece of 

 woodland on the Highland. The drumming of male birds is 

 regularly heard occasionally in late September and early October. 



47. Circus hudsonius. Marsh Hawk. 



An uncommon, though regular, summer resident. Marsh 

 Hawks are seen from time to time in the valley region and over 

 the hillside fields throughout the season. It is not unusual to 

 meet with one or two on a day's or half-day's drive through the 

 open country, and they are frequently observed in flight over 

 the fields of the Highland slopes and about Cherry Pond. 



On July 27, 1905, in a trip to Weeks Pond, on which Mr. 

 H. A. Purdie accompanied me, we came upon a nest with five 

 fully grown young in the low swampy growth bordering the 

 pond and outside the line of the surrounding forest. Upon our 

 approach four of the 3'oung birds took wing and disappeared in 

 different directions. The fifth, not being sufficiently developed, 

 remained. Mr. Purdie took this bird up in his hands, we 

 examined it, and he replaced it in the nest, where it remained. 

 One of the parent birds had been circling in the sky from the 

 time of our arrival, but made no movement of coming to the pro- 

 tection of its young. The nest was full}^ exposed to the sun's 

 heat and the weather, being placed on the ground in an opening 

 of the low growth, which afforded no shelter, while it screened 

 the location from view until one was close beside it. As the 

 trail we were following was a little aside, we very probably 

 would not have detected the nest or the young, had not the four 

 birds which were ready to fly risen on wing at our advance out 

 of the forest, 



