Nov., 1915 
CHARACTERISTIC BIRDS OF THE DAKOTA PRAIRIES 
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an ordinary tsip, but its song is individual, a hoarse rasping kah-kah-kah-kah- 
kah that at first surprises and grates on the ear, but as the season waxes comes 
to be pleasantly associated with the aromatic tang of the blooming silver-leaf, 
and is peculiarly grateful when several of the little Spizellas are answering each 
other in the bushes. 
Two sets of nests were found in June and July. Young were evidently be- 
ing fed on June 21, for an old bird with bill full of long wings started and flew 
straight back into the heart of an argentia patch. In the second week of July 
two nests were found, one just completed and one containing eggs. The second 
of these was beautifully located on the edge of a lake. It was quite hidden 
until the low plants were parted, when a small cup containing three lightly 
wreathed blue eggs was disclosed lying on the glossy fern-like leaves of a cinque- 
foil. When examined closely it proved to be made of grass stems and lined with 
horse-hair. 
While the Clay-colored Sparrow and the Yellow Warbler were the two most 
abundant birds of the silver-leaf, they were not its only inhabitants. On the 
edge of a patch near the farm a pair of Marsh Hawks hid their nest and vali- 
antly fought their windmills in the form of a perfectly harmless bird student. 
When I was going to photograph the young, with the assistance of two other 
women, as we pushed our way through an especially high stand of argentia, a 
female Mallard burst from her nest in the thicket just ahead of us. We pressed 
eagerly on to examine it. Twelve eggs lay in the nest, encircled by a high rim 
of down, and five of them, as the keen eyes of the women from the farm detected, 
had already been pipped. The old Duck was needed at home now ; we must not 
keep her away. One of the women quickly twisted some green leaves around a 
gray bush top for marker, while I noted a north and south line from the farm 
windmill to a tree on the Marsh Hawk slope, and an intersecting east-and-west 
line marked by wild plum bushes, after which we hurried away to let the old 
Duck return to hatch out her brood. 
But though we left the neighborhood as fast as impeding bushes would per- 
mit, the anxious Duck instead of returning to the nest flew out and began to 
make wide circles around and around us. As she crossed the sky ahead of us 
with outstretched level head and neck we could see not only her mottled body 
but white-bordered blackish tail, and at a glint of light caught the violet of her 
speculum between its white borders. Before we reached the Hawk’s nest, when 
the Duck had completely encircled us five or six times, we interfered with her 
orbit. Instead of changing it she started back on her track. She was then 
headed toward the lake, and as if an idea had suddenly occurred to her, made 
a slight detour and went down to it. When she returned a few moments later 
she was accompanied by her mate. Together they flew completely around us — - 
we could see his long green head and neck as he passed in front of us— and then 
as if reassured by his presence or the result of his inspection, or, perhaps, on the 
decoy principle trusting to his presence to draw our fire, when their circle 
reached the nest she dropped down to it and he calmly flew off back to the lake. 
Whatever it was that she had brought him for, it was a pretty conjugal 
episode. But as we were moralizing upon it — up rose this Elsa, her Lohengrin 
being gone, and to satisfy herself more fully proceeded to circle around us once 
more ! By this time, however, our absorption in our task of photographing the 
Hawks’ nest was so reassuringly obvious that even the doubting Elsa seemed 
satisfied, for she came no more. Presumably she returned to the nest, but we 
