. The oist . ned tothrow him to the ground at any mo-ment. After a climb of about twenty-five feet he reached the nest and dig-ging carefully through the rotten woodhe found that the eggs had not beenlaid. We were bitterly disappointed atlosing the set of eggs, but as we wereyoung collectors we made no attemptto stop up the hole we had made in thestub, thinking it was useless; for webelieved that the birds would desertthe nest. I have since found that wewere wrong and devised a method bywhich the eggs can be obtained with-out risk of the nest being deserted un-til the set is laid. This method
. The oist . ned tothrow him to the ground at any mo-ment. After a climb of about twenty-five feet he reached the nest and dig-ging carefully through the rotten woodhe found that the eggs had not beenlaid. We were bitterly disappointed atlosing the set of eggs, but as we wereyoung collectors we made no attemptto stop up the hole we had made in thestub, thinking it was useless; for webelieved that the birds would desertthe nest. I have since found that wewere wrong and devised a method bywhich the eggs can be obtained with-out risk of the nest being deserted un-til the set is laid. This method willbe explained later on. This stub wason a high, rocky ridge—a very un-usual place for these birds to nest asthey generally prefer swamps. For many years after this first ex-perience, my acquaintance with thisspecies was limited to an occasionalglimpse of one of these birds in thewoods, though sometimes in the win-ter one would be seen flying from onewoods to another. I felt sure that 888 THE 00^>OQIST. Western Red-bellied Hawks Nest and Eggs —Photo by J. B. Dixon. they were nesting in the vicinity, butso carefully were their nests hiddenthat all attempts to find them wereunsuccessful. In the summer of 19H my brother,while driving through a piece of oldgrowth woods about a quarter of amile from our home, saw a youngPileated Woodpecker barely able tofly. This made it certain that thisspecies of bird had had a nest in thosewoods. Greatly encouraged by thiscircumstance, I decided to try to findthe nest the next year. The next spring I was returninghome through these woods about themiddle of April after an unsuccessfulhunt for a Great-horned Owls nestwhich I had been trying to find sincethe last of February. While passingthrough a swamp in which there werequite a number of dead stubs I noticeda large circular hole about half way up in a large poplar stub. I went tothe foot of the stub and soon madecertain that some bird was making anest there, for the ground was strewnwith
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1880, bookidoist29al, booksubjectbirds
