168 



THE OOLOGIST. 



ami from tb.at day to this that i)lum 

 t;roc lias hccn liis liomc. But lie has 

 bucomu so tame tli;it he will take meat 

 out of my wife's hand, .she usually feeds 

 him, and hangs around her like a eat or 

 dog Avill around their master. I never 

 saw one treacherous action about him, 

 is g(!ntle to everything, unless it be 

 ilogs or cats that sometimes try to steal 

 his meat, tlieii take care. Neither one 

 has any liusincss with him, and when 

 they attempt to dt'fraud him, the gen- 

 erally depart witii more haste than dig- 

 nity. 



One more item showing the sagacity 

 ot birds as well as animals, and I will 

 close this too lengthy article. Abe is a 

 very clean bird and likes the bath tub 

 every day, will splash and play in a 

 tulj of water equal to any duck or goose. 

 One day he was given a dishpan of 

 on the porch close to the door. There 

 were strangers in the house who want- 

 ed to see him bathe, but of whom he 

 was a little shy. He eyed the pan of 

 water for a while, then carefully ap- 

 l)roached and grabbed the handle one 

 side of the pan with one of those mighty 

 claws, and literally dragged that pan of 

 water away to what he thought a safer 

 distaifce, then took his regular bath 

 plumed and dried himself, and then re- 

 turned to his plum tree Avhere he now 

 sits nionan'ji of all he surveys. I have 

 always been a great lover of pets and 

 have had many, but not one to whom 

 wife, children aiid all were so attached 

 they would all rather go without meat 

 than to see Abe go hungry. 



R. U. Goss, 

 New Sharon, I(jwa. 



A Day's Collecting Trip. 



I ngi'er witli your (•orres[)ondcnt, J. 

 V. W., in the Decenilicr Oolocjist, that 

 no collecting att'ords more real, solid 

 enjoyment than searching for the nests 

 of water Ijirds. I will endeavor to tell 

 the readers of the OoLOGlST of a pleas- 



ant trip which I made on the 30th of 

 May. I left home and arrived at a 

 slough back of the gun club grounds, 

 about 9 a. m. This slough was sur- 

 rounded by a meadow. I had not pro- 

 ceeded over one hundred feet when a 

 Itird flushed almost imder my fe«!t. A 

 glance told lue that it was a Bhu^-wing- 

 ed Teal. I looked down and there was 

 the nest. It was nothing but a "hole in 

 the ground," lined with down, and con- 

 tained twelve eggs. Rather a large set 

 as Davie says 6 to 10. My next tind 

 was an uncompleted set of two Long- 

 billed Marsh Wren's eggs. The nest 

 was m;wie l)y bending down the sur- 

 rounding grasses and weaving other 

 grasses thraugh them, making a globu- 

 lar structure with the entrance on the 

 side. Within ten feet of this nest I 

 found a set of 11 Sora Rails eggs. Last 

 year this bird was very common and I 

 could have taken 500 of th^ir eggs, but 

 the above set is the only f)ne I found 

 this year. I next found a lot of com- 

 mon eggs which I did not take, such as 

 Red-winged Blackbirds, Yellow-headed 

 Blackbij'ds, Yellow 'Wai'blers, etc. I 

 then started for another lake and on 

 the way a farm boy showed me a set of 

 three Least Bittern's eggs. The incu- 

 bation Avas one-fourth advanced. He 

 also gave me a set of six Virginia Rail's 

 eggs for a sling shot. I now sat down 

 and ate my lunch, when I saw a bird 

 fly to a birch tree near the water. I 

 went and investigated the matter and 

 the result was 4 badly incubated eggs 

 of Yellow-bellied Woodpecker. I now 

 started for a lake where I had heard 

 that Black Terns bred. Upon reaching 

 it a cloud of them came over my head 

 uttering their shrill cries. I waded in 

 and found five sets of three and one set 

 of two. The nest was nothing but a 

 pile of grasses with a slight depression 

 on which the eggs were deposited. In 

 all cases the nests were floating. While 

 collecting these I found three sets of 

 Pied-billed Grebes — two sets of seven 



