Page:Condor6(2).djvu/13

Mar., x9o4 [ THE CO?NDOR 39 A Sandhill Crane's Nest EDWARD R. WARRElq ?'ITH A PHOTOGRAPH BY THE AUTHOR N the western part of Gunnison county, Colorado, bet?veen the slope of Ragged mountain and Muddy creek, is a high, rolling plateau, of an elevation of 8000 feet or more. In amongst the hollows of this plateau are many little lakes or ponds, varying in size from fifty to sixty ieet in diameter to a hundred yards or more. During the past three seasons I have been about this country very much, surveying, and every season have seen sandhill cranes (Grus mexicana)flying overhead and heard their melodious ? notes, but did not find a nest until June 5, x9o3, when, while chopping out a line across the top of a little knoll just south of a small pond, my assistant disturbed a crane. This kept flying about and croak- " I NEST OF SANDHILL CRANE, GUNNISON COUNTY. COLORADO ing so anxiously as to make him think there was a nest there, and going to see he found it, with two eggs. When I came along he showed it to me. Out about twenty feet from the shore, was the nest, on a bare space among some tussocks of grass which lay more or less in a line. The water was not very deep but the mud was and I could not get to the nest as there was nothing of which to make a bridge, so I had to content myself with a careful examination from the shore. The nest was irregular in shape, about two feet across and made of dead marsh grass. On this platform, such as it was practically, lay the two large eggs, looking, my man said, something like turkey eggs. They were rather a light brownish green, spotted and blotched all over with light reddish brown, the spots being thickest and largest on the large end of the egg, though there did not appear to be any great difference in the size of the ends.