86 THE GAME FALCONS OF NEW ENGLAND. 
more cleanly in their habits than most birds of prey. Audubon 
says, “their season of breeding is so very early that it might be 
said to be in the winter.” This needs a little explanation. At 
the time this was written the only eggs of the duck hawk known 
to oologists on this continent were found north of the limits of 
the United States, where the season is so much later than in our 
latitude, that snow is frequently on the ground when the eggs are 
collected. One of my collectors in that locality writes, “I got a 
nest last spring as early as the first of April, when the snow was 
a foot deep.” This certainly would appear like winter to one ac- 
customed to see the frost out of the ground and the roads settled, 
as it often is here at that time. The usual time of nesting is from 
the last of March to the middle of April; sometimes earlier, and 
sometimes later, but no more irregular as to time than most of 
our rapacious birds. They will nest two and possibly three times 
during the season if the eggs are taken as often, as appears from 
the observations of Mr. Bennett. 
If the arbitrary law of James I. of England, relative to rob- 
bing the peregrine falcon’s nest (“the taking of the eggs, even 
on a person’s own ground, was punished with imprisonment for a 
year and a day, together with a fine at the king’s pleasure”), had 
been in force in the United States, until quite recently, there could 
not have been a much less number of their eggs found in our 
odlogical cabinets that were obtained within our own territory. 
The common number of eggs found in a nest is three or four. 
Audubon once found five. The size and markings vary consider- 
ably according to the observations of different writers upon the 
subject. The first set obtained by Mr. Bennett were quite different 
in size and markings. Audubon remarks, “the eggs vary CoD- 
siderably in size and markings, which I think is owing to a differ- 
ence of age in the females; the eggs of the young bird being 
smaller.” This certainly cannot account for the unusual differ- 
ence in the set obtained by Mr. Bennett, for they were all taken 
out of the nest at one time, and must have been laid by one bird. 
Mr. G. A. Boardman writes that “the duck hawk’s eggs I find 
vary much in size and color, the last nest I got from the cliffs at 
Grand Menan were very oddly marked ; one looks very much like 
the fish hawk’s, only differing in size; in another, half the egg is 
white, with brown blotches on each end.” I think the set of Mr. 
Bennett and that of Mr. Boardman are exceptional cases, as before 
