20 



THE OOLOGIST 



E. J. Court of Washington, wrote me 

 about a nest of four he had observed 

 and my late lamented friend Darling- 

 ton almost made me envious when he 

 showed me his set of four the last 

 time I was home. Sets of four are 

 so rare that very few collections will 

 ever have one, and a set of three will 

 be just about as great a rarity and 

 my personal opinion is that many of 

 the sets of three are not authentic 

 sets by any means. 



On eight different occasions I have 

 found that an adult female will mate 

 up with an immature male, but never 

 have I seen an immature femalp 

 mated up with an adult male. In each 

 of these eight cases there was one in- 

 fertile egg, and I never in all my ex- 

 perience found an infertile egg in a set 

 from a pair of adult birds. 



The female is much the braver bird 

 about the nest and will take more 

 chances than the male every time. 

 Never, though, have I been attacked 

 by an Eagle, although I have climbed 

 into a few, or at least it might "be con- 

 sidered a "few" by some folks, my 

 notes show 259 Eagle nests in the past 

 eleven years that I have been in. 



The nearest to being attacked was 

 the time I spent the entire night in a 

 nest with a young pair. See Bluebird, 

 December, 1914. 



Except on the keys along the Coast, 

 our Eagles here always use a live pine 

 tree, deserting it usually when the tree 

 dies. On the keys I have found them 

 as low down as ten feet in the man- 

 groves while in the interior they go as 

 high as 140 feet. The preference for 

 pine trees is shown very plainly on 

 an island in the Gulf that is about 8 

 miles long and contains one little 

 runty scrub of a pine about 18 feet 

 high, this bush has an Eagle's nest in 

 it and is yearly looted by boys, while 

 on this same island there are thous- 

 ands of better locations in the man- 



grove thickets that it would be almost 

 impossible for any one to locate. 



I have had many thrilling experien- 

 ces in climbing into these 259 Eagle 

 nests, but a recital of these would 

 make a story in itself, however, from 

 the ornithologist's point of view I have 

 gleaned the following facts, which 

 when I compare them with the exper- 

 iences of Billy Crispin the last time 

 we were together, fitted in with his ob- 

 servations to a nicety. 



If the pair of eagles are sitting 

 around when you arrive at the nest 

 tree, they have either not laid yet or 

 there is young in the nest, previous 

 observations on this nest as to time of 

 eggs will be a help here to one. 



If one bird stays on the nest until 

 the tree is rapped upon there will be a 

 set of eggs, unless it is very cold or 

 about daylight or sundown, when if 

 they have really young they will stay 

 on and hover them. 



If the eagle is standing up in the 

 nest when first seen, she has eitiier 

 one egg or is about to lay, so if you 

 want a full set from this nest refrain 

 from climbing up for several days be- 

 cause if you climb up and find one egg 

 and leave it for a full set you will get 

 left sure, as they invariably break the 

 egg and you will find the shell on your 

 next visit. I find one exception to this, 

 however, in one nest in which I left an 

 egg when I went back I found the egg 

 gone, no shell anywhere or any sign 

 on the lining of the nest where it had 

 been broken, and to deepen the mys- 

 tery the pair never were seen about 

 this nest again that year. I always 

 thought they moved it to another nest 

 somewhere. 



As near as I can judge it takes five 

 weeks for an eagle egg to hatch, and 

 the young are born with their eyes 

 open and up to a month old show no. 

 fear of man but will eat readily of any 

 food that you give them that is usual- 

 ly in abundance on the nest. The 

 young are covered with greyish down 

 and show no sign of feathers until 

 three weeks old when their wings be- 

 gin to sprout a few. While I am un- 

 able to state exactly, it takes about 12 

 weeks from the time of hatching until 

 the young can fiy, and at that age are 

 usually much larger than the parents. 



Oscar E. Baynard. 

 December 26, 1915. 



