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THE GAME FALCONS OF NEW ENGLAND. 85 
least vestige of a nest except a slight hollow in the earth, there 
being barely soil enough to keep the eggs from rolling out. In 
one instance where there was a little grass on the projection, it was 
all removed, and nothing but the bare earth left for the nest.” 
Mr. J. A. Allen, in his “ Notes on some of the Rarer Birds of 
Mass.,” gives Mr. Bennett the credit of being the first to find the 
eggs (April 19, 1864), so far as is known to naturalists, within 
the limits of the United States. I have received letters from two 
different sources, claiming to have found the eggs in Pennsylvania 
and Maryland some years prior to that date. If so, oölogists 
would not have been any the wiser had it not been for Mr. Ben- 
nett’s persevering labors. So far as I am able to find any pub- 
lished account of it, Mr. B. is entitled to priority. 
It would seem that the duck hawk is not a very pugnacious bird, 
as other birds are often found nesting quite near it. Says Au- 
dubon, ‘in several instances we found these falcons breeding 
on the same ledge with Cormorants (Phalacrocorax carbo).” Says 
Mr. G. A. Boardman, “ the cliffs on which the duck hawk breeds are 
very high, and often when above you cannot tell where to go over, 
as you cannot see the nest from above or below unless the bird 
flies off. It is so with the ravens. They breed within a few rods 
of one another in one place.” They become very much attached 
to their nests, and will occupy them as long as they live if not 
repeatedly robbed of their eggs and disturbed. If one of the pair 
is shot the surviving one will secure a mate and return to the 
game nest. In the north of Scotland they breed on the precipitous 
cliffs of that mountainous region, and some of the eyries have been 
known traditionally, as far back as the annals of the district ex- 
tend. Mr. Bennett informs me that a farmer residing in Vermont, 
under a precipitous cliff, told him that a pair of eagles (duck 
hawks), had occupied the same nest on the ledge ever since he 
owned the farm, thirty-seven years, and how much longer he could 
not tell. Mr. Bennett, with great effort, secured for me from that 
nest a set of four of the handsomest and most uniformly marked 
eggs of the duck hawk that I have ever seen. From the same source 
I learn that this falcon defends it eyrie several weeks prior to oc- 
cupying it, with as much and even more tenacity than during incu- 
bation. This peculiarity is not exclusively confined to this bird, 
for I haye observed the same in some others of our rapacious birds 
while building their nests. They nest very early and are much 
