Sept., 1918 FROM FIELD AND STUDY 191 



Large Set of Eggs of the Western Red-tailed Hawk. — I received a letter a short 

 time ago from a former club member, Mr. O. P. Beekman of Wasco, Kern County, rela- 

 tive to the finding of an abnormally large set of Buteo borealis calurus which I thought 

 might be of interest to Condob readers. The nest was found April 14, 25 feet up in a 

 large cottonwood tree and contained two newly hatched young, two pipped eggs, and two 

 eggs far advanced in incubation. I have heard of a number of sets of five eggs, but this 

 is the first one of six. — Laueence Peyton, Fillmore, California, May 28, 1918. 



Supposed New Record for Central Kansas. — On June 10, 1918, while collecting near 

 Solomon, in eastern Saline County, Kansas, I found a nest containing three eggs of the 

 Painted Bunting (Cyanospiza ciris). I have spent several years collecting in this part of 

 Kansas and have never noted the bird here before although I am quite familiar with the 

 species, having collected it near Bartlesville in northern Oklahoma. Upon finding this 

 nest I knew that I had made an important record, so returned three days later and col- 

 lected the set and the female bird. The male was not seen. The eggs were highly incu- 

 bated at this time. The identification is made certain by the fact that the female is dis- 

 tinctively colored on the back, a bright greenish olive, and because the eggs are well spot- 

 ted, all the other species of buntings laying plain unspotted eggs. 



Mr. A. K. Boyles, a taxidermist of Salina, Kansas, only a few miles west of here, 

 stated to me that he had never known of the occurrence of this species in central Kansas, 

 tie is also familiar with the bird, having noted it in northern Oklahoma. Extreme south- 

 ern Kansas (Barber and Comanche counties) seems to be the northernmost previously 

 recorded locality (Goss, Bds. Kansas, 1891, p. 492). — A. J. Kirn, Solomon, Kansas, July 

 20, ID 18. 



Bird Notes from Admiralty Island, Southeastern Alaska. — The last winter has been 

 a hard one in this section. It was all winter weather since last Thanksgiving, with snow 

 ten feet deep the end of March. This was by far the worst winter I have ever seen here, 

 and I believe that ninety percent of the deer will have died. In regard to recent papers in 

 The Condor about the migration of horned owls to the Puget Sound region, here too they 

 have been numerous. The rabbits all died in the interior last year (1916), and the lynx 

 and owls have all been moving to the coast during the last two years. They have almost 

 cleaned up the grouse and ptarmigan, and the lynx are now doing well on mallards, etc. 

 Last fall I shot three Bubos around the house, and a visitor shot one that had just killed 

 a mink. An acquaintance, a reliable man, was trapping around Icy Point last fall and 

 winter, and he says that he killed more than twenty owls with clubs or by throwing his 

 trapping hatchet at them. He saw a great many more, some of them sitting around and 

 hooting in broad daylight. One that he killed was eating a loon, not dead yet, one was 

 eating a gull alive, one was eating a squirrel, one was eating another owl which was not 

 dead yet, and one was eating a mink. Mink are very scarce, supposed to have been killed 

 off by the owls. He found an eagle eating an owl, and I, myself, saw near a deer carcass 

 signs that an eagle, presumably, had killed and eaten a white owl. I killed a very large 

 Golden Eagle (Aquila chrysaetos) in January at Mole Harbor, Admiralty Island. He had 

 been trying to catch a duck until it was so wet and weak that I ran it down on the flats. 

 The owls all left Mole Harbor when the snow began to pile up in December. There is a 

 territorial bounty of fifty cents on eagles, and over three thousand have been killed. The 

 Alaska Council of National Defence is striving to have bounties placed on bears and all 

 sea birds. — Allen E. Hasselborg, Juneau. Alaska, March 29, 1918. 



A Late Nest of the Swainson Hawk. — A nest of Buteo swainsoni, examined by the 

 writer on the 12th of July, 1918, was found to contain two eggs which were apparently 

 fresh. The bird was incubating. The eggs were entirely unmarked. A subsequent visit 

 on July 20 disclosed only an empty nest, with no hawks in sight. The eggs were prob- 

 ably destroyed by men who had been at work in an adjacent field. The nest was well 

 up toward the top of a cotton-wood tree on the bank of the Teton River, beside a ford. I 

 first discovered it on July 7, when the bird was upon it, but I did not then climb up to 

 examine it. 



This is much the latest nesting date that has come to my attention. Incubation 

 is usually begun in this locality (southeastern Teton County, Montana) during the last 



