146 
THE CONDOR 
| Von. VIII 
ing-to-learn farmer to whom every hawk is a “hen hawk”, and the small boy with 
a gun to whom every large bird is natural prey, and many are sacrificed needlessly. 
All hawks among the unknowing have a wholly unfair reputation where poultry is 
concerned; for the sins of the unjust are visited upon them all. One handsome 
B. lineatus elegans is as slight a danger to a chicken yard as any Raptor we have; 
I might almost say as any bird we have. Nearly every nest of the species that I 
know of is within a few hundred yards of some barn yard and it is very, very sel- 
dom the birds exact tribute. 
One of my friends in San Pasqual Valley, where these hawks are common, 
told me the red-bellied and reel-tailed hawks had nested on his ranch as long as he 
could remember (he is a very old resident) and it was very seldom they would 
touch a chicken tho the latter were running free all the time. The young hawk 
in the photo was from a nest in a tree in his barn yard, not over 150 feet from the 
barn itself. The milk house was under the next tree in the small grove of big 
Eucalyptus trees at one side of and partly in the corral, the fence of which shows 
in the photo. The chicken 
house is between the milk house 
and the barn. All the time I 
was at the nest some 200 chick- 
ens of all ages and sizes were 
working around the barn yard, in 
the corral and out on the stubble 
beyond, many of them fully 200 
yards from shelter but they never 
even gave a warning cry when 
the old hawk flew from the nest 
across the yard. 
The young birds were at an 
age when their demands for food 
must have been very great, and 
there was only one parent bird 
to look after them, the male 
bird having been shot a few 
weeks before by a new hired 
man. One would think that 
yellow-legged chickens so con- 
venient would prove too great an attraction to the doubtv worked mother but they 
were never touched. The young hawks would have flown in a couple of weeks. 
The down had nearly disappeared and flight and tail feathers were about two-thirds 
developed. In appearance they resembled the female bird, the brighter plumage 
of the male not developing until maturity. 
One of the young was very cross when I went up to the nest, screaming and 
striking with her wings, and when moved from a perilous position near the edge of 
the nest rolled over on her back and tried to scratch. Her bad temper brought her 
to a sad ending for she managed to fall out of the nest to the ground, some 50 feet 
or more, landing heavily and when I got to her she was only a poor little bunch of 
feathers, and would scream no more. She had been well cared for. Dissection 
showed a full stomach and crop — a field mouse entire, parts of skulls of two more 
and a various assortment of small bones and fur and part of the foot of some small 
bird which I could not identify. The nest contained part of a brush rabbit and 
some squirrel fur. Her nest mate was quite tame, perched confidingly on my 
