294 LIFE HISTORIES OP NORTH AMERICAN BIRDS. 



a pair occupying a trough-like cavity in a large sycamore about 50 feet from 

 the ground. The nest contained three fresh eggs on March 27, 1875, which 

 were laid on the fine, soft rotten wood in a hollow, worked out of the same to 

 fit the body of the bird. There was no other material or lining except a few 

 feathers and down mixed with the decayed wood. On March 17, 1876, a 

 pair were found nesting on the opposite side of the river from the above 

 described nest, in a cottonwood at least 60 feet from the ground, the birds 

 entering a knot hole in the tree apparently not over 5 or 6 inches in diam- 

 eter. The tree was very straight and without limbs up to the nest, and this 

 was out of reach. The birds were very noisy, but shy. On April 30, 1877, 

 he found another pair about 4 miles farther up the river, breeding in a broken 

 hollow limb of a giant sycamore, and from the actions of the birds he thought 

 they had young. 



Colonel Goss further states: "The males, so far as noticed, sit upon the 

 eggs in the fore part of the day, and the females during the latter part; each, 

 while off duty, occasionally feeding the other, but putting in a good share 

 of the time as sentinels, perched upon a favorite dead limb near the nest, 

 ready to give the alarm in case of approaching danger. At such times they 

 scold rapidly and manifest great anxiety and fear, circling overhead, occa- 

 sionally alighting, but taking good care to keep out of reach. Their fear of 

 man is not without cause, for our hunters never lose an opportunity to shoot 

 at them, knowing how destructive they are to the waterfowl found in the 

 sloughs along the river bottoms." 1 



In Cleburne County, Arkansas, it nests in the sandstone bluffs along the 

 Little Red River. Mr. B. T. Grault noticed them in such locations there in 

 the spring of 1888, and Mr. O. Widmann informed him that they also nested 

 quite abundantly in the rocky bluffs and ledges along the Mississippi River, 

 a few miles south of St. Louis, Missouri. 



In Montana, Dr. James C. Merrill, U. S. Army, says they are quite com- 

 mon along the Missouri and Yellowstone Rivers, near cliffs or cut banks, where 

 their nests were placed, sometimes in a cavity in some rock high above the 

 river, and then, again, on a shelf or projection of a clay bank, so low 

 that he could see the contents of the nest from the upper deck of the steamer. 

 Their abundance on the Upper Missouri is further confirmed by Mr. R. S. Wil- 

 liams, who writes me: "Quite a number of these birds breed in the high sand- 

 stone cliffs above the Falls of the Missouri. I found a nest containing two 

 birds just hatched and two eggs, on June 5, 1885. The nest was situated 

 in a small hollow in a perpendicular wall of rock, some 15 or 20 feet above 

 the base of the wall, and consisted of a few coarse twigs and bits of grass, 

 forming a ridge on the outer side barely sufficient to prevent the eggs from 

 rolling out. The parents were both about and quite bold, dashing back and 

 forth overhead and keeping up a constant succession of noisy screams as long 

 as I was near." 



1 Bulletin Nuttall Ornithological Club, Vol. Ill, 1878, pp. 32-34. 



