Mar., 1904 I 
THE CONDOR 
39 
A Sandhill Crane’s Nest 
BY EDWARD R. WARREN 
WITH A PHOTOGRAPH BY THE AUTHOR 
I N tlie western part o{ Gunnison county, Colorado, between the slope of Ragged 
mountain and Muddy creek, is a high, rolling plateau, of an elevation of 8000 
feet or more. In amongst the hollows of this plateau are many little lakes or 
ponds, varying in size from fifty to sixty feet in diameter to a hundred yards or 
more. During the past three seasons I have been about this country very much, 
surveying, and every season have seen sandhill cranes ( Gms mex/cana) f[y\ng 
overhead and heard their melodious ? notes, but did not find a nest until June 5, 
1903, when, while chopping out a line across the top of a little knoll just south of 
a small pond, my assistant disturbed a crane. This kept flying about and croak- 
NEST OF SANDHILL CRANE, GUNNISON COUNTY. COLORADO 
ing so anxiously as to make him think there was a nest there, and going to see he 
found it, with two eggs. When I came along he showed it to me. 
Out about twenty feet from the shore, was the nest, on a bare space among 
some tussocks of grass which lay more or less in a line. The water was not very 
deep but the mud was and I could not get to the nest as there was nothing of 
which to make a bridge, so I had to content myself with a careful examination 
from the shore. 
The nest was irregular in shape, about two feet across and made of dead marsh 
grass. On this platform, such as it was practically, lay the two large eggs, looking, 
my man said, something like turkey eggs. They were rather a light brownish 
green, spotted and blotched all over with light reddish brown, the spots being 
thickest and largest on the large end of the egg, though there did not appear to 
be any great difference in the size of the ends. 
