they are hatched one day apart — nest-finding is easy. On one occasion I saw a male Marsh Hawk flying heavily westward, a quarter
of a mile away, carrying what afterward proved to be leopard sper-
mophile. Steadily I watched him until he had passed the open
fields and meadows and reached an open space between two poplar
and willow 'bluffs.' He was then more than half a mile awa}'. Sud-
denly, from the ground below him. rose his mate, with most exquisite
grace, catching, with her feet upward, the prey that he dropped to
her when she was a. few feet below him. With slight detour, she
went at once to the nest ; to which I also went, well-nigh as directly,
locating the nest before I reached it, in the little cluster of willows
just beneath the bird.
One brood of birds reared in such a site as this, on a vacant
section of land amid the fields, I believe to have been reared by the
female alone. In forty days of occasional study I never saw or
heard the male. This nest, found when the first egg was hatching,
has formed the basis of all subsequent study as to ages, and relative
feather-growth : so that the most of what follows will group the facts
portrayed about this family, though other broods have supplied their
quota of interesting things.
I have never detected any difference in the foods brought to the
young at the various stages of their growth. Smaller morsels for
the smaller birds, and that seems all. Among the ejecta analyzed
have been found the remains of field-mice, leopard frogs, leopard
and striped spermophiles ; and, I am compelled to confess it, young
Pinnated Grouse. Of these, three skeletons have been found. In
the main, the male is the hunter. This habit of dropping the quarry
to the nest, or to the mate, is rather common — I having, while half
concealed in my buggy by dense brush, seen the male approach an
open area beyond, hardly two hundred feet away, and drop the
game to his mate from a height of fifty feet above her, she then
carrying it a hundred yards awa}', to the nest — the only nest I ever
failed to find.
In two weeks after birth the birds grow lanky. About this time
they begin to make run-ways from the nest, to eat their food in
seclusion, or to find a better shade from the heat of a June sun. At
about three weeks the flight-feathers begin to sprout, and the lusty
young things, prone enough to hide along their run-ways at two
weeks old, become now more bold, yet no less inclined to slink away
the minute one's back is turned. After this age the photographing
of these birds becomes a science by itself — requiring cool, sunny
days, abundant patience, and no end of plates. The mosquitoes and
the blue-bottle flies, both being faithful retainers at the Marsh Hawk's
Page:Bird-lore Vol 01.djvu/275
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How a Marsh Hawk Grows
47
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