Egors of the 
Sparrow Hawk. 
(92) 
THE BIRD WORLD. 
spot each year, it does not seem un¬ 
reasonable to assume that the same 
birds, or the survivor in case of one of 
the original pair being killed, return 
year after year. 
Useful Observations. 
In 1904 four females were shot from 
their nests, but no males were killed. In 
the following year, from eight nests dis¬ 
covered, seven females and one male 
were shot. Owing to a change in 
keepers in 1906, the woods escaped 
attention altogether, and no Hawks were 
killed, but nests were found in seven 
of them and the eggs examined. In 
1904 no particular attention was paid 
either to the birds killed or to their eggs, 
but the. latter were said to have been, 
generally, pretty heavily marked; one 
clutch which were blown, and which I 
saw subsequently, were distinctly so. In 
1905 the seven nests from which the birds 
were shot all contained heavily blotched 
eggs, unusually fine coloured specimens, 
taking them as a whole. In one nest 
there was a single egg showing only faint 
ticks of brown, the usual pale variety 
so often met with in a well-marked 
clutch. In the eighth nest the eggs were 
all of the lightly-marked variety, and 
from this nest, being undiscovered by 
the keepers, the young got off in safety. 
In 1906 the eggs in four nests were of 
the lightly-marked type; in the remain- 
Photo by ] [L. C. Grey. 
A Young Female Sparrow Hawk. 
ing three, though more heavily marked 
than the others, they were in no instance 
so richly coloured as those of the pre¬ 
vious year. The wood which held the 
light-coloured eggs in 1905, and the 
young from which got off, again con¬ 
tained a nest of pale eggs in 1906. 
Good and Bad Breeding Seasons. 
Of the seven females shot in 1905 
four were in immature plumage. In 
1906 it was not found possible to make 
sure in every case, but three or four of 
the hens were certainly young birds. All 
the males appeared to be mature; the 
one shot in 1905 certainly was so. 1905 
was a good breeding year for Hawks 
as for game, and every one of the eight 
nests contained five eggs as their full 
complement, every one of which proved 
to be fertile. 1906 was a bad nesting 
season all round, and of the seven nests 
found, only one contained as many as 
four eggs; four of them contained three 
each, while in the remaining two only 
two eggs each were laid, an unpre- 
cedently small number in my experience 
of Sparrow Hawks. Two of the 
clutches of three each included an 
unfertile egg, so that the net result of 
1906 was only twenty eggs laid, and 
eighteen young hatched from seven 
nests; while had they been unmolested 
in the previous year, eight nests would 
have produced forty birds. Of the 1906 
Photo by] [Z. C. Grey. 
One of the Victims. 
