122 
THE CONDOR 
Vol. XV 
like ‘‘quap". He repeated this note several times and finally dropped to the 
ground about a hundred feet away from me, flapping his wings and calling a 
high squealing note as though badly hurt. Later on I watched tliis performance 
every time 1 approached the nest, and have since seen it in other individuals of 
this species. It is one of the mo.st peculiar and novel methods of feigning wound- 
ed that I have seen in any bird. The bird circles at a height of about fifty feet, 
then dro]is straight down close to the intruder, until within two or three feet of 
the ground, then sails low over the grass and brush in the opposite direction from 
the nest, until a hundred feet or more away when he lights on the ground facing 
the intruder, squealing as though in great pain, and with wings widespread and 
flapping. If followed he will wait till one gets within about twenty-five feet, then 
slowly and carefully folds his wings one at a time, rises and sails a little farther 
away and repeats the wing flapping and squealing. If one is not watching him 
when he first drops to the ground, he frecpiently calls attention to himself by 
Happing his wings against his sides or breast as he drops, producing a sudden, 
loud and startling noise that is very surprising in a bird wdiose Hight is ordinarily 
perfectly silent. This performance com- 
pels the attention so strongly that it 
seems that it must he quite successful 
in luring away a coyote or other natural 
enemy that might venture too close to 
the nest or young. 
When I first saw this performance 
on the evening in question it immedi- 
ately gave me a clue to the location 
of the nest ; so I went in the opposite 
direction from that in which the bird 
tried to lead me, and soon flushed nis 
mate from the nest. As soon as I had 
found the nest, the first bird, I presume 
the male, ceased his attempts to lead 
me away, and he and his mate 
circled low about my head, clicking 
their bills and frequently calling 
“quap” and occasionally prolonging this 
note to a scream, slurred downward, like that of many of the hawks, "but of a 
curious hoarse quality. The nest was flat on the ground, underneath and sur- 
rounded by cincpiefoil hushes, and contained nine voung. There really was no 
nest hut meicly a bunch of young" birds hncidled tog'cther, and if there ever had 
been a nest, the young had tramped it out so thoroughly that it was now unrecog"- 
nizable as such. The young were in various stages of development, the youngest 
being downj and blind while the oldest was well feathered, with yellow eyes wide 
opened, and showing fear of me by clicking his bill and hissing in much the same 
manner as a cat hisses at a dog. The }'oung were so close together that I had to 
separate them to count them. 
I now noticed a curious difference in the parent birds. The female, at least the 
one that had been at the nest with the young, when I found it, had a higher 
pitched, more squeaky and less harsh voice than the male, when she called 
“quap.” She was also a little more heavily streaked on the breast than was her 
mate. Conse(|uently I had no difficulty in distinguishing the two birds, and I al- 
ways found the male on guard in the willow bush or the cottonwood tree, and the 
Fig. 38. Young ShorT-earsd Own about 
22 Days Old; Photo Taken near Chou- 
teau, Montana, June 28, 1912 
