The Swainson Hawk 



Taken on the Mohave Desert 



NEST IN JOSHUA TREE, FROM ABOVE 



Photo by Pierce 



even before deposition of eggs has begun; and if a first set is taken, the 

 female is very likely to entrust a second to the same nest. Two or three, 

 rarely four, eggs are laid, at intervals of two days, and they require 

 twenty-eight days of incubation. Eggs are rarely deposited before the 

 middle of April, so that the young are not often a-wing before the last 

 week in June. Always unwary, except where unjustly persecuted, the 

 Swainson Hawk will often allow a near inspection of its person ; while a 

 young bird imagines you are joking, and gapes appreciatively when you 

 fling it a tentative clod from the roadside. 



Swainson's Hawk is the most conspicuously migratory of any of the 

 Hawks, and it sometimes travels in great companies numbering over 

 a thousand individuals. Such a notable movement the author witnessed 

 as a child in western Kansas. An east-and-west-lying creek bed pre- 

 sented in its fringing timber of elm the only opportunity for shelter to be 

 had for miles in either direction. Into the more prominent trees of this 

 coveted timber, on a late October afternoon, came a large detachment 

 of migratory hawks, to the number of a thousand or so. No doubt 

 the Swainson Hawks formed the bulk of the predatory host, gone into 



1694 



