84 THE GAME FALCONS OF NEW ENGLAND. 
May 25th that they were taken from a cliff on Talcott mountain, 
about twenty feet from the summit. It was with inexpressible de- 
light that I viewed these birds, for I then supposed that I was the 
first to settle the mooted question, and in the article above referred 
to, I stated that this settles beyond dispute three points ; first, that 
they breed on cliffs; second, that they breed in Connecticut ; and 
third, that they nest very early. These young birds were evidently 
from four to six weeks old when captured, and allowing three weeks 
for incubation, it must bring the time of nesting the latter part of 
March. This was the first nest of the duck hawk ever taken in 
New England so far as is known to naturalists.. The young were 
kept alive, and two of them were given to Professor S. F. Baird in 
the fall of 1862, when on a visit to E. W. Hill, and were kept 
alive at the Smithsonian Institution until the spring of 1863. A 
few years after this, my attention was called to a note in Dr. Brew- 
ér’s North American Oology, part Ist, page 9, in which it appears 
that Prof. S. S. Haldeman had found the nest and captured the 
young on a high and almost vertical cliff on the banks of the Sus- 
quehanna; the account of which was published in the ‘Proceed- 
ings of the Academy of Natural Sciences,” vol. 1, page 54, 1841. 
Prof. Haldeman says, in that article, “it is asserted in the works 
on American ornithology that the Falco peregrinus builds its nest 
on trees, and not in the clefts of rock as in Europe. So far as my 
observations have gone this remark is incorrect, inasmuch as they 
build in the cliffs which border the Susquehanna. This species re- 
mains in Pennsylvania ten or twelve months in the year.” 
It is now universally admitted that duck hawks nest on cliffs 
and never on trees, and that they select places difficult to get at 
and often inaccessible, which is, no doubt, the reason that the 
eggs have been so seldom found. Says Audubon, in speaking of 
the nests found on the high and rocky ghores of Labrador and 
Newfoundland, “ they were placed on the shelves of rocks, a few 
feet. from the top, and were flat and rudely constructed of sticks 
and moss.”. The nest on Talcott Mountain was of the same con- 
struction. The nests found by Mr Bennett in Massachusetts and 
Vermont were entirely ‘destitute of sticks and moss. Mr. B. in 
describing to me the several nests which he has been fortunate 
enough to find, says, “ they’are built a little below the summit of 
tlie ledge, on a projection of rocks, which in one instance was not 
more than one foot in width, without sticks, grass, moss, or the 
