The Baltimore County union. [volume] (Towsontown, Md.) 1865-1909, 1905-03-18
HUNTING BIG RIRDs' EGGS.

Those who think deer or mountain
lion hunting to be hard work ought
to try hunting hawks nests for
while and get taste of the really
strenuous life. Hawks nests are all
over the world from the equator to the
Far North; they make up Que of the
largest and most widely known of any
of the bird families. Tothem belong
the great bald eagles and the tiny
sparrow hawks every one knows.
But their habits are all different, so
that methods which will result in the
finding of one hawks nest, says the
Los Angeles Times, will take the
hunter directly by the home of an
other species. The little sparrow
hawk lays its eggs in hollow tree,
while the eagle builds bulky nest of
all sorts of sticks and places it in the
very tiptop of the highest available
tree.
Tie hawk hunter-who, by the
way, calls himself an 'oologist"-
takes with him as much of an outfit
as would a deer hunter. First of all
he wears suit of duck or khaki, lem
mon, or, preferably, forest green in
color, and instead of the usual heavy
shoes of a hunter, light leather crea-
tions which yield to every movement
of the foot and cling as tenaciously to
the bark of trees as would the bare
foot. To aid him in climbing still
further, he carries pair of the "clim-
bers' used by telephone and telegraph
linemen. Added to this is tin box
having straps on each end so that ie
may be easily carried, and in which
the eggs are carefully packed in
cotton.
Entering the forest or the cliff wall
ed canon, the modern hawker strikes
out carefully, treading as silently as
any deer hunter, searching the skies
frequently with field glass for the
great birds he seeks. Hawks, eagles
and most of the owls nest in early
spring, from the first of February to
the end of May, so that the collector
must be afeld early in order to get
eggs in which incubation has not com.
menced. He scans the tops of trees
or such likely places as he knows and,
finding some great bulk of sticks
looming darkly against the sun, he
lays down his paraphernaliG and as
cends the tree. If the hawk be one
of the large species, known as buzzard
hawks, rap on the trunk of the tree
will usually send the nesting bird in
screaming flight from her home.
With the smaller hawks this test does
not apply, but the experienced
hawker rarely climbs to nest from
which no birds can be induced to fly.
Once secured and brought safely
home, the next thing for the ''oolo-
gist" to do is to preserve the eggs.
This he does by drilling a small hole
in one side of the eggs and removing
the contents by means or a blowpipe.
instruments are manufactured for this
purpose, and many are of intricate
make for use when the eggs are val
liable and so far incubated as to be
unsavable with the unaided blowpipe.
When the eggs are emptied they are
thoroughly dried with hot air and then
laid carefully away in trays of corn
meal to become entirely dry in case
the air has left any drops of moisture.
In a day or two they are placed in their
final nest of cotton in the drawer of
cabinet where many other hawks
eggs have preceded them. Each
collection is catalogued, and the eggs
are marked with known symbol, so
that not only may each set be distin-
| guished from all the others, but each
species may also be known by glance
at the egg and without reference to
the printed catalogue.
Many thousands of dollars worth
of hawks and other birds eggs pass an
nually through the mails of this coun-
try. They are sent in exchange be-
tween collectors and many come from
Europe, where they study birds eggs
and the sport of collecting them have
been developed to much greater ex-
tent than here.
A rare merlin, found only in the
northern part of Canada during the
breeding season, lays an egg worth SIS
to its fortunate finder and not only
this, but the merlin usually lays some
three to FIVE eggsin every nest so that
"set" (as the full number of eggs
laid by a bird is called may be worth
a neat sum to the hawker who finds
it. But it is not for money that most
of these men who have taken up this
kind of sport go out; many of them
are independently rich, others are in
lucrative positions, but they take it
up as means of getting out into the
world of the wild, and bring home the
eggs as souvenirs of their trips. In
time this has has grown to be reg
gular study, until now almost all the
large museums have a department de-
voted exclusively to the study of the