Page:Bird-lore Vol 01.djvu/274

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46 Bird -Lore eared Owl trying to swallow his little five-days-old brother ; why might not, then, a fledgling Marsh Hawk turn cannibal ? The photographing of the above remarkable nest gave new and beautiful emphasis to a matter of incubation-economics that I have observed in this region, as an absolute! ' uniform fact, with the NESi AND EGG, AND Makmi hAUKj, ABOUT ONE TO FOUR DAYS OLD Pliotographed from nature by E G Tabor, Meridian, N. V, Bobolink, the Meadowlark and the Marsh Hawk : but to which I have yet never seen attention drawn by any writer or observer. This fact was' the more interesting in that I did not notice how carefully the eggs were arranged to secure greatest uniformity of heating from the mother's bod}- until the negative had been developed. In this region all the species noted above lay, normally, six eggs, and these eggs I have invariably found arranged in two rows of three each. In case of the Bobolinks and Meadowlarks. the two rows are always ' in line ' with the entrances, and these birds, when observed on the nest, were alwa}s sitting with their heads peering out over their door-steps. In case of the nest of eight eggs noted above, it will be seen from the illustration that two of the eggs lie, each, in the junction between the sets of four that lie nearest together. What a startling revelation, by the way, might be made should some future development of X-ray photography make it possible for one to photograph, for instance, a Sora Rail, sitting on her sixteen eggs in one of our northern marshes ? When once the eggs of the Marsh Hawk begin to hatch— and