THE GAME FALCONS OF NEW ENGLAND. 343 
it always came in the same direction from a tract of woods near 
his house. Thinking from his description that it must be either 
the sharp-shinned, sparrow, or pigeon hawk, and believing that 
it must have a nest near, and wishing to obtain the eggs, I drove 
out. Accompanied by my friend, we carefully searched the woods 
without finding anything except the nest of the red-shouldered 
hawk. The next day the same little hawk returned and was shot, 
and is now in my collection, a beautiful representative of the pigeon 
hawk. Ihave no doubt that it had a nest about there, asit was the 
season for nesting, and it always came from, and went to the same 
piece of woods and in the same direction. If it had not young, it 
must have been carrying food to its mate while incubating. If a 
mere straggler, it would come and go without any definite place 
of resort. Our inability to find the nest was not strange, as there 
were some sixty or eighty acres of ,heavy-timbered oaks and pines 
in the tract. 
There seems to be some diversity of opinion as to where they 
nest, as well as to the color and number of eggs. Hutchins informs 
us that it nests in hollow rocks and trees about Hudson’s Bay — 
making its nest-of sticks and lining it with feathers, and laying 
from two to four white eggs marked with red spots, while Audubon 
says “that in Labrador he found three nests placed on the top 
branches of the low fir trees, composed of sticks slightly lined with 
moss and feathers, and that each nest contained five eggs of a dull 
yellowish brown color thickly clouded with irregular blotches of dull 
dark reddish brown.” He also found another nest with five young 
init. Nuttall says “ that it chiefly inhabits and rears its young in 
the southern states.” Dr. Brewer says Nuttall is probably mis- 
taken, as “ The pigeon hawk is distributed in the breeding season 
throughout the northern part of North America. It breeds as far 
to the south as Maine on the Atlantic coast, and California on the 
acific.” ‘+ In every instance when I have heard of the pigeon 
hawk as a summer resident south of Maine it has proved to be the 
sharp-shinned hawk (Accipiter fuscus).” And furthermore he says, 
in alluding to its nesting in hollow trees, “ This is a condition in 
which the nest of the pigeon hawk is never found, and one in which 
no other hawk than the sparrow hawk is ever found.” Dr. Abbott 
of New Jersey claims to have found a nest with young in it ina 
hollow sycamore tree near Trenton, in May, 1863, and to have found 
the nest with eggs on an elm tree in 1865. How are these differ- 
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