June 1888.J 



Am) OOLOGIST. 



89 



breakfasted and went for the woods. Nolliing 

 of interest was seen, and the smoke from the 

 fires was so dense we could searely see one 

 hundred yards l)efoie us, so I started home 

 early. 



Uu tlie way 1 saw a large IlawU, willi .-i 

 bloteh of irliitc on his breast, and tried, but in 

 vain, to kill him. I never saw one like it be- 

 fore, and would like to know what it was. 



In eonelusion, 1 will say that 1 expeet to 

 spend about a week at the mill in January, and 

 will give the readers of the O. i<: (». the result 

 of the trip in a later paper. 



Nesting 



of the Pine 

 i888. 



Warbler in 



»V C. S. HKIMLEV, KAI.EKill. N. (' 



Since reading Mr. McLaughlin's article on 

 the breeding of this bird (Di-ii,h-ara piniis), at 

 Statesville. North Carolina, it has been my in- 

 tention to look np tlie matter in this loc^ality, 

 and as I had considerable success in so doing, 

 I give the results below. 



In this locality, tlie Warblers began building 

 about March 20, and in a week the whole colony 

 were engaged in so doing. They ]i<-^[ mo lime 

 while building, but rapidly .completed Mielr 

 nests, and two weeks from the time of st.,-u ting 

 tlie nests, had them supplied with full ?i'ts of 

 fresh eggs. 



The nest is composed of grape-vine bark, 

 weed stems, and sometimes some cotton, and 

 is well lined with horse hair and feathers, the 

 outside being usually garnished with some sort 

 of cobwebby material, and the whole makes a 



warm, deep and compact nest, which i iplctc- 



ly hides the setting bird from view. 



The structure is placed on the horizontal 

 limb of a pine tree, usually one of tlie old field 

 growth, at a distance of from two to twelve 

 feet from the trunk, varying from twenty to 

 eighty feet high fiom the ground. Tln' ii<ii;il 

 height was about fifty-five feet, only imc nesl 

 under fifty feet being found, and that was the 

 fiist one. 



The set coiii|i|i'iui'iil is four, but one se' of 

 five was found. Tlir date for full sets of fresli 

 eggs is .Vpril 1) lo 13, the birds all seeming to 

 breed at once. 



When incub.aling, tlie female was constanlh' 

 on the nest, which she would not leave until 

 the limb was displaced or was violently Jarred. 

 The birds mostly showed considerable anxiety 

 at being disturbed, but only one tried to decoy 



us away by the broken wing dodge, atid that 

 was the owner of the set of five. 



The nests were all hard to find, and all ex- 

 cept one were found by seeing the bird go to 

 them while buililing, and as the female usually 

 gi'ts nesting material from a long distance from 

 tlie nest, it often took a good deal of watching, 

 especially as the bird seldom went straight to 

 the nest, but wotdd fly to another part of the 

 tree first or else fly to a tree a little beyond be- 

 fore going to the nest. 



The song of the male bird was not much help 

 in finding the female, as she didn't .appear to 

 Ihiiik it neees.sary to keej) parliciilarly near him 

 as long as she wasn't more tli.iii fifty yards 

 away. 



[Mr. McLaughlin writes me that lie has taken 

 twenty-seven sets of this Warbler's eggs near 

 .Statesville, North Carolina, this past season. 

 Of these, only one set contained five eggs. — 

 J. P. N.] 



Retention of their Eggs by Birds. 



BY W.M.TEli IKIXIi;. 



Less than a hundred years ago, a bad little 

 boy lived on a country place in New England. 

 His mother had a number of hens, and in the 

 dead of winter one of them became " broody." 

 Various methods of tre.-itment were i-esorted to 

 for the cure of this unseasonable desire, but all 

 to no purpose. " Old Toj) Knot " clucked pertin- 

 aciously. 



Now this bad little boy took it into his head 

 that his mother erred on the side of men^y, so 

 one evening he thought he recognized the per- 

 tinaceous old hen — be thought he recognized 

 her I mean — skulking in the barn cellar. So he 

 seized hei-, and clapped her into a tub which 

 had a little water in the bottom. He then cov- 

 ered it over with some pieces of bo.inl anil left 

 her. 



That was on Sunday night. The next Satur- 

 ilay he came home from seliool, ami lliere 

 in the barnyard, amongst the mini and slu^^b of 

 the ".January thaw," was old To|i Knot cluck- 

 ing away as vigorously as ever. Conimeriting 

 upon th(^ fact to Tim, the Irish boy-of-all-work, 

 the latter remarked th.it '' she looked like his 

 motlier's best layer that got out of the coop a 

 week ago come to-moi-row, witli a hard egg in 

 her, and hadn't shown up since." 



Well, the long and the short of it is they went 

 to the barn cellar together, took Tim's mother's 

 hen out of the tub, and foun<l that the hard egg 



