General Notes. 
59 
the Eagle the Coots all huddled together, remaining so during his rest, 
swimming about aimlessly and casting uneasy glances up in the direction 
of their enemy. The moment the Eagle lifted himself from his perch, 
the Coots seemed to press towards a common centre until they were 
packed so closely together that they had the appearance of a large black 
mantle upon the water; they remained in this position until the Eagle 
made his first swoop, when they arose as one bird, making a great noise 
with their wings, and disturbance with their feet which continued to 
touch the water for the first fifty or one hundred feet of their flight. This 
seemed to disconcert the Eagle who would rise in the air only to renew 
his attack with great vigor. 
“These maneuvres were kept up, the Eagle repeating his attack with 
marvelous rapidity, until, in the excitement and hurry of flight, three or 
four Coots got separated from the main body; this circumstance the Eagle 
was quick to discover and take advantage of ; it was now easy work to 
single out his victim, but usually long and hard to finally secure it. I 
have never seen him leave the field of battle, however, without a trophy 
of his prowess, though I have seen him so baffled in his first attempts to 
separate the birds, that he was compelled to seek his tree again to rest. 
“On one occasion, after separating his bird from the flock, he spent 
some minutes in its capture — the Coot eluding him by diving; this fre- 
quent rebuff seemed to provoke the Eagle to such an extent that he finally 
followed it under the water-^- remaining some seconds — so long, indeed, 
that I thought him drowned ; he finally appeared, however, with the bird 
in his talons, but so weak and exhausted that he could scarcely rajse him- 
self above the water, and for the first thirty or forty yards of his flight his 
obtained near Falls Church, Va. — Nest rather rude and irregularly 
shaped, composed externally of coarse grass, lined with exceedingly fine 
grass^tops circularly disposed and well finished but without any horse- 
hair; no ottfergmaterial than grass was used in its construction. The nest 
is about four inMjes in diameter, about two inches in height, and 
two inches inside diameter; it was placed in the center of a large 
clump of wild clover ( Trifolium agrarium ) and rested directly on the 
ground without any appeararitevpf a cavity. The clover had grown up 
about a foot or more in height and completely surrounded the nest, which 
was only discovered by parting it. Tdie female was secured as she flew 
from the nest. The eggs, four in number, are much blotched and speckled 
all over with a mixture of madder-brown and sepia, the color becoming 
more confluent on the larger end ; there are also a few dashes and dots of 
very dark sepia, almost black, scattered among the spots. One of the 
eggs has a number of large blotches of a lighter tint than the spots 
scattered all ovey'it so as to almost form a ground tint for the spots. The 
ground color fs a delicate greenish-white. The measurements, in hun- 
dredths of finches, are as follows: .75 x .60, .75 x .58, 75 x .56, .75 x .60. 
These eggs, taken June 3, contained large embryos within four or five days 
of hatching. As I took full-fledged young last year on the 12th of July, 
they undoubtedly raise two broods in a season. 
