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                             ORNITHOLOGIST
                                 —AND—
                               OÖLOGIST.


  $1.00 per      Joseph M. Wade, Editor and Publisher.     Single Copy
  Annum.               Established, March, 1875.             10 Cents.
  VOL. VIII.              BOSTON, MARCH, 1883.                  No. 3.




                           Among the Buteos.


The voices of our New England Buzzards are again ringing through their
old haunts, and it may now be seasonable to review my local notes on
their breeding habits last Spring. In short, then, I took 104 eggs. And
from other nests in my circle of observation were taken or destroyed by
farmers, hawk-hunters and others, sixty more eggs and young birds. So
until a more favored breeding range is made known I shall claim this to
be the home of the Buteos. A correspondent in Rochester writes that he
thinks as many eggs can be taken yearly in that vicinity, but until this
is shown to be true I shall not believe the distribution of species is
so equal. If this article could be accompanied by a good physical map of
Norwich and its environs, it would help greatly to support my claims. An
irregular line drawn around the city just outside the suburbs would pass
through the breeding places of sixteen pairs of Red-shouldered Hawks
which I marked down the second week in April. Except a few hemlocks, the
groves and strips of first growth are all deciduous and nearly all
nut-bearing. The red squirrel, which is not so relentlessly shot down as
his gray cousin, is amazingly plenty in these suburban woods. While
skating yesterday on Yantic cove, within the city limits, I saw seven
squirrels playing in the small patch above Christ’s church on the river
bank. Every one who has climbed to nests of young Buteos nearly fledged,
must have been astonished at the great quantity of these young rodents,
supplied by the parent birds. In one nest of Red-tailed Hawks I have
seen portions of nine red squirrels, and from another have counted out
on the ground seven entire bodies. A game bird or chicken now and then,
but red squirrels for every day bill-of-fare. Mousing, Master Buteo will
go. And frogging, too, for I have several times surprised him in muddy
sloughs in the woods, and field collectors often are called to notice
the black mud on fresh Hawk’s eggs. Given then a great food supply and
the species that follow it will be abundant. Over the grove of second
growths to the left of Love Lane, last Spring, I saw a pair of
Red-shouldered Hawks hovering for days in succession. I knew they were
not breeding in the patch, as they had not done so in former years, and
there were but three old Crow’s nests very low down. But to be very sure
I examined the grove repeatedly with care and found it to be alive with
red squirrels. In one apple-tree hole was a litter of six; in the butt
of an oak were five with eyes unopened, and the conspicuous outside
nests were many. A Barred Owl clung to the top of a white birch with one
claw, and was tearing away at a squirrel’s new domed nest with the other
claw. The Hawks had their nest with two young in the swamp beyond, and
this grove was their handy larder, and very noisy they were over their
daily grace before meat.

The Buteos’ nests from which my ’82 series was taken, were for the most
part old ones, the very few exceptions being smaller than those used for
several seasons. The use of an old nest by the Great-horned Owl is
habitual. The Barred Owl takes a hole when it can find one, and if not,
an old nest. Failing there, he builds a very small nest of the flimsiest
sort. To show the dislike of our Raptores to nidification, let me
reproduce an avian drama to which usher nature gave me a free pass and
open stall last Spring. The scene opens late in March on Plain Hill,
where a pair of Red-shouldered Hawks were furbishing up the nest in
which off and on they had bred for five years. Their dalliance was
pleasant, no doubt, but dangerously long, for a Barred Owl slipped in
and laid two eggs April 1 and 3. The Hawks were virtually indignant, and
were often seen to dash down towards the nest, as if to dispossess the
intruder, but they always wisely stopped a few inches above the snapping
bill and mass of fluffy feathers with nine points of law in its favor.
The Hawks at length went across a small swamp and re-upholstered the
nest in which the Owl bred in ’81. I now took the two Owl’s eggs,
supposing the clutch complete, but she then went across the swamp and
laid the third egg in her old tenement. When I climbed to the second
nest, with the Hawks in possession, it contained three Buteo’s eggs and
one Barred Owl’s. Blowing showed that the Owl’s egg was slightly
incubated, and it would have been interesting perhaps to have let nature
had her course with this motley clutch. The unwearied owl now went back
to the first nest and laid and hatched her second clutch of two eggs.
Ovipositing after a while again becoming a necessity for the Hawks, they
too repaired to the opening scene of our drama from high life, and after
a few noisy demonstrations against the Owl, took up their new quarters
in a tree within gunshot of the first. The nest was so small I could not
believe that even our smallest Buteo (_pennsylvanicus_), could breed in
it, though I saw the great female Red-shouldered come from it, and could
see that it was feathered through my field glass. Climbing showed it to
have a very large and bright initial egg, which was riddled with shot
the next day by so-called hawk-hunters. The marauders completed the
series of reprisals by carrying away my young owls.

Aside from my first object, I have dwelt on the final details of this
little tragedy, because it also is a fair illustration of the domestic
troubles of the Rapaciæ here in the breeding season. With every man’s
hand against them—hunter, farmer and collector—it is a continued source
of wonder that so many eggs are taken and so many hawks left. Some may
be alien birds drawn by the food supply. But as a solution to this
question it is not unreasonable to suppose that later in the season when
the farmers are busy with field work and the collector is eagerly
following the small birds in their Summer homes in the outskirts of the
woods, that made wary by pursuit, and screened by the dense foliage, the
resident Buteos manage to “steal” an occasional nest and bring up enough
young to keep up the old local race. This idea is in part born out by
the fact that in my Winter tramps through our leafless woods, I now and
then run across a Hawk’s nest which I knew was not there the year before
and the first chapter of whose life history had not been revealed to
me.—_J. M. W., Norwich, Conn._




                          Notes from Nebraska.


April 21, ’82, found my first nest of the American Long Eared Owl. ’Twas
in the forks of a small white oak tree fifteen feet from the ground and
contained five eggs ready to hatch. It resembled that of the Common
Crow, only smaller. While I was examining this nest the old birds showed
their displeasure by flying and darting close to me, continually
snapping the bill.

At times they would alight upon the ground and with spread wings and
tail flutter around, doubtless for the purpose of alluring the intruder
from their nest. The same day I found the nest of a Black Cap Chickadee
containing six fresh eggs.

April 23d I found the nest of a Screech Owl in a hollow oak tree twenty
inches below the opening. It contained three fresh eggs. From this same
tree during the Winter of 1881 and ’82 I captured five fine specimens of
this owl.

May 1st I took another set of eggs of the American Long-eared Owl. This,
like the former, contained five eggs and they were incubated