ORNITHOLOGIST 
— AND — 
OOLOGIST. 
if>i.oo per 
Annum. 
PUBLISHED BY THE FRANK BLAKE WEBSTER COMPANY. 
ESTABLISHED MARCH, 1875. 
Vol. XVIII. HYDE PARK, MASS., OCTOBER, 1893. 
Single Copy 
10 cents. 
No. 10. 
A Nest of Hen Hawks. 
Dr. Merriam says that Fish Hawks, A.O. 
U. 364, do not breed as far up the Connect- 
icut river as Hartford, but as they are al- 
ways very common here about the middle of 
April, I thought he might be mistaken. So 
I watched the meadows where they fish 
pretty closely, and also asked my brothers to 
keep an eye open for big nests. As what I 
am going to write has nothing to do with 
Fish Hawks, I may as well say right here 
that, though I once saw one with weeds on 
her feet, we didn’t find any nests, and I 
guess that Dr. Merriam knows what he is 
talking about alter all. 
The boys had been fishing for Alewives in 
these meadows and, April 22, they told me 
that they had several times seen “ a big 
bird, not a Fish Hawk,” fly out of a large 
nest which I had watched for the last four 
years without seeing it used. 
So I got my climbers and rowed up there. 
The water sometimes covers this place to a 
depth of fifteen feet, and there is always 
more or less there every spring. I saw the 
bird, a Red-shouldered Hawk I found later, 
and on going up to the nest saw that it had 
been repaired a trifle and contained four 
eggs. They were a dirty white, more or less 
spotted with brown, mostly in small spots 
but some blotches. The spots are no 
thicker at one end than at the other. The 
eggs are about the size of a small hen’s egg, 
rounder perhaps. They were almost ex- 
actly like a set of five, well incubated, that I 
took from a neighboring tree on the 30 th 
of last April. They measured 2.16x1.66, 
2.20x1.68, 2.18x1.70, 2.04x1.65, and 
2.16 x 1.68. 
By the way, it took me nearly two weeks 
to blow one of those eggs. I had to fill it 
with water and let the infant soften before I 
could get him out. 
As I had those five already, I decided to 
leave this set in the nest and watch them. 
I found in the nest, beside the eggs, about 
six inches of the tail of a grass snake. The 
old lady had taken it to bed with her ! 
I went away as quietly as I could and 
came back again on the first of May, but 
the eggs had not flown yet. But on the 
8th, when I went next, I thought some- 
thing was the matter before I got to the 
nest, for the female called up her mate, who 
stayed most of^he time in a grove of maples 
near by, and together they made quite a 
noise. Each time before she has slipped 
off the nest as quietly as possible. 
On going up I found one egg hatched 
and another with a hole in it three-quarters 
of an inch in diameter. The bird’s bill was 
moving about weakly but he didn’t seem to 
be making any effort to get out ; getting his 
wind, perhaps. There were only a few 
small pieces of the shell in the nest, so I 
think the old bird threw them over as soon 
as the chick hatched. Of the other two 
eggs, one was still whole and the other was 
cracked a little where the bird was pushing 
out from the inside. 
The chick that had hatched was quite 
pretty, being covered thickly with light grey 
down, which was nearly three-fourth inches 
| long on the head. The belly was entirely 
I bare. The little fellow peeped quite lustily 
