I50 BIRDS OF THE DISTRICT OF GEELONG 
to the latter half of September and the whole of 
October ; in fact, one may say that nearly all Goshawks 
breeding in the district will have laid their eggs by 
the end of the first week of October, so very regular 
are they. The nest is sometimes large, but more 
often quite a small, irregular-shaped, almost frail 
structure of sticks, looking not much bigger, from 
below, than a Magpie's nest. It is lined with a few 
gum-leaves and is placed at an average height of 
30 feet from the ground, invariably in a gum-tree, 
and more often than not in a comparatively small 
horizontal fork. The eggs are two or three in number, 
greenish white with a few smears of reddish. 
There comes back to me the memory of the 
September morning when, in the spring of the year, 
and myself not yet emerged from the happy springtide 
of boyhood, I found my first Goshawk's nest. There 
had been some question, I remember, of a visit, on 
the one hand, to the little-known ridge overlooking 
Swan Bay, and on the other to the Salt Lake, near 
Point Lonsdale ; and standing, an hour after sunrise, 
near the fourteenth milepost on the Queenscliff Road, 
I decided in favour of the latter course, turning 
straightway south-east into a valley where the rain- 
soaked earth gave up the acrid savour of gum-leaves 
and the air was vocal with cries of a hundred birds. 
A quick, dark shadow crossed a sunlit patch of grass, 
but the cause was gone before I could see it. Above 
my head, near the top of a thirty-foot sapling, was a 
smallish nest ; I climbed up, only to be disgusted 
