Cooper’s Hawk, 
and streams in North Dakota, I expect to 
find eggs of the red-tail and of the ferru- 
ginous rough-legged hawk (a bird feath- 
ered down to the toes and with a white 
tail) by the first of May, of Cooper’s hawk 
about the middle, of marsh hawk (on the 
ground in a depression of the prairie or by 
a slough) and sparrow hawk (in a hollow 
tree) from then to the last of the month, 
and of the large and tardy Swainson’s 
hawk (similar to the red-tail, but with a 
banded tail) about the first of June. Here 
the season is much later than in southern 
New England, but in Florida “hawking” 
begins early, for the bald eagle, which is 
really only a big hawk, there lays its eggs 
by December or January. 
One bright day in early May, after an 
eight mile drive by a swamp in Plymouth 
County, Massachusetts, I came to a lonely 
clearing where a stalwart farmer lived in 
solitude. He was having a hard time with 
his poultry-raising, owing to the depreda- 
tions of a pair of little sharp-shinned 
hawks that evidently had a nest in the 
dense cedar swamp near by, whither they 
usually flew. Every few hours one of 
them would come and get a chicken, so 
boldly and quickly that the persecuted 
farmer could never get in a shot. In his 
distress he appealed to me, invoking my 
far-famed skill as a hawk-hunter. 
The first thing was to find the nest. 
Together we made a systematic search of 
the cedar-tract, and in less than an hour I 
spied a likely nest, from which the little 
