July, 1881.] 
AM) OOLOGLST. 
The Season of 8i. 
The notes of Judge Holbrook, in the 
June number show, what birds can be seen, 
and liow many hints on migration obtained, 
in simply walking from house to office with¬ 
out once setting foot off the pavement. 
To follow these birds afield, and observe 
their breeding habits, also other and allied 
species not noted here by the above ob¬ 
server is the purpose of the ju’esent 
wi’iter. 
I have kept up my average of over fifty 
hawks’ eggs this season without special 
search. Of course more or less traveling 
and sky-gazing was hivolved, but by “with¬ 
out search” is meant that no new pairs of 
hawks were looked after and no new 
woods traversed. But in the old haunts 
I harry my Buteos and Accipiters each 
year with as much confidence as the Green¬ 
lander annually robs the Eider Duck of 
eggs and down. 
Mirch 1 “and April 24,” I took sets of 
two eggs each from a Barred Owl’s^hole, 
which in four seasons has yielded me twen¬ 
ty four eggs. These “short sets” were com¬ 
plete ; to make the matter certain, a hen’s 
egg was substituted for each set, but the 
clutch was not increased. April 30th “took 
two infertile and undersized eggs of this 
species from an outside nest, the first 
found in such a situation for several years. 
I took three Red Shouldered Hawks from 
it late last year. May 4th, so the nest was 
left in good condition. The outside was 
built strongly of slicks by crows, in 1879, 
to which the hawks, after throwing out 
the usual winter litter made by squirrels, 
added a fine and bulky lining. This was 
in turn all torn away by the owl, and the 
eggs, laid in the deep bowl on bare sticks 
were visible from the ground through a 
field-glass. A male Barred Owl was shot 
here in the mating season, the second 
week in March, and this may account for 
the condition of the eggs. This owl, after 
covering her sterile products for four 
weeks, had the audacity to hoot and smq) 
lier bill at me betrause I j^revented her 
from setting all sumnu r to no j)urpose. 
In the Salt Rock IVoods, an old nest in 
which were well grown, young Red tailed 
Hawks, May 11th, 1880, had two young 
Great Horned Owls, April 10th, 1880. The 
Red-tails this year, finding in their home 
powei’ful tenants, with nine points of law 
in their favor, built a new nest half a mile 
down the woods, from which I took the 
usual clutch of two eggs on the above 
date. Took set, of Buteos, April lOth, from 
an old nest which six years ago held seven 
crow’s eggs. In the interim the nest had 
been patched more then once, and even 
2 )artly feathered, and so had done duty as a 
decoy on several occasions. May 8th, took 
from adjoining swamps two sets of 
Jineatus too far gone in inciibation to be 
preserved. I have certainly left this sea¬ 
son three pairs of this species to breed in 
woods reasonably secure from the far¬ 
mers’ muzzle-loaders. This year’s ex¬ 
perience adds data to the fact that B. 
borealis loves to breed on dry hillsides, 
where the woods are rather open, and a 
wide range of view can be had of the ap¬ 
proaches to the west, while B. lineatus 
breeds commonly in low-lying, wooded in 
tervals and swamps. 
A j^air of Cooper’s Hawks, which gave 
six eggs in ’79 and four in ’80, again came 
to the front with five eggs the second 
week in May, ’81. Last season I took an 
addled egg from a Marsh Hawk’s nest and 
a slightly chipped egg which I placed in 
my pocket. The . chipj^ed egg however 
soon proved to be a very lively music-box, 
oval design, and “wound up” by the key 
of naLire. The nest also held four lusty 
young a week old. The hawk occupied 
two weeks in ovipositing and four w'eeks 
in incubation. From this pair of Harriers, 
May 25th, this year, I have a set of foiir 
fine spherical eggs. A Sharp-shinned 
Hawk, which gave me a large set of eggs 
last year, with a “runt” egg at the end of 
the clutch, this season laid the runt egg 
at the beginning of her clutch which was 
not unusual in number. The life-history 
