102 



THE OSPEEY. 



again obliged to return to camp. Having- now 

 the better part of two days and some forty miles 

 of travel invested in this enterprise, I had little 

 choice but to make a third effort, which I did next 

 day, finding- a herder on duty who, having- been 

 instructed by his employer to pilot me when I 

 should arrive, readily proceeded to do so. 



About a half mile from the ranch house, at 

 the edge of a great, rushy, hundred-acre slough, 

 we first descried the big, handsome gander 

 doing- sentinel duty and here we waded in. A 

 heavy freeze the night previous (May 12th) had 

 formed ice nearU' as thick as plate glass and 

 thoug-h with the advance of daj^ this was Jiow 

 breaking- up, we were hard put to it to save our 

 waders from being cut through by the sharp 

 edges. It seems the herder had never visited 

 the nest in person and only knew in a general 

 way that it was located somewhere in this par- 

 ticular slough, and it then became a matter of 

 quartering that big expanse of marsh grass and 

 thick bullrush till the sitting bird should be ap- 

 proached closely enough to frighten her from 

 the nest, no light task in that icj' water ranging 

 in depth from tfie knees to the hip, counting the 

 mud at the bottom which clogged the feet and 

 made progress painfully slow. But, finally, 

 from a mass of bent and flattened bullrushes of 

 last year's growth, perhaps fifty feet from us, 

 up rushed a fitting mate for the gander first 

 seen. I judge either one of these birds would 

 have weighed easily from twelve to fifteen 

 pounds. The nest was simply a bowl-shaped 

 depression in the mass of flattened rushes lined 

 with bits of broken rushes and a mass of down, 

 and contained seven eggs, much stained and 

 near the hatching point. Considering the 

 period of incubation four weeks, I concluded 

 that this nest must have been made and eggs 

 deposited more than three weeks before, while 

 yet much snow lay on the ground, and before the 

 marsh was free from the winter's ice. 



Driving back toward the close of day, among 

 the dr^' sand dunes some half dozen miles from 

 camp, naturally dwelling somewhat on the vir- 

 tues of perseverance, the "ofi^" cart wheel sud- 

 denly set, the result of a "hot box", and it was 

 not till I had found a pool of water, cooled the 

 hot steel so as to make it possible to remove the 

 wheel and daub on the axle some bacon gii'asc 

 from a left-over lunch, that I was able to pro- 

 ceed. It took fully six hours of patient labor to 

 "blow" those eggs and separate the nest down 

 from the rubbish lining among which it was 

 entangled. .The set and nest were collected for 

 Mr. Morcom and, considering all the time, labor 

 and trial involved, I trust he will be well pleased 

 with them. 



But besides landing the goose nest, I had on 

 one of the trips located a pair of Sandhill Cranes 

 that evidently were about to nest: but had op- 

 portunity to closely examine hundreds of Golden 

 Plovers on their way to the far north, arrayed 

 in their striking spring plumage, resting and 

 feeding all about me on the .burned prairie; 

 had for a full half hour and at short gun range 

 watched through the glass a pair of Marbled 

 Godwits, as fine a species of shore bird as is to 

 be found in the list, and had taken a highly 

 marked set of egg-s of the Ferruginous Rough- 



leg from a nest among boulders on a big hill 

 blackened over by fire in a strip of sterile, 

 desolate country. 



The Loss of a Crane's Egg. 

 Much as I would have liked to remain in the 

 vicinity till the Sandhill Cranes should pre- 

 pare their summer home yet, as this was imprac- 

 ticable, I sought out a new Russian settler who 

 had located his crude house of sod and mud 

 about a mile away and, explaining to him the 

 Crane situation, promised him a dollar if, later 

 on, he shovdd procure and bring or send to me in 

 perfect condition the set of two eggs. The com- 

 mercial spirit is strong in the breasts of these 

 late subjects of the Czar and he readily accepted 

 the terms. I mapped out for him on paper the 

 exact location of the little strip of rushes 

 selected by the pair, rehearsed for his instruc- 

 tion all my knowledge of the nesting habits of 

 the species, impressed upon him the danger of 

 causing the birds to abandon the spot before the 

 full set of two eggs should be deposited, showed 

 him how the eggs could be safely wrapped, and 

 charged him to observe nest location and com- 

 position to the smallest details. Three weeks 

 later he brought me o)ie eis;^ with an unfortu- 

 nate dent near the greater end. In extenuation 

 he said that following out my instructions care- 

 fully about a week after my visit he found the 

 nest within a few feet of the spot designated by 

 me and containing one big e^^. and that he was 

 so excited he seized the e^g and hastened home 

 with it and that on the way the mosquitoes stung 

 so fiercely that in waving" his hand about his 

 head the egg came in contact with the butt of 

 his gun. Later on he says he twice visited the 

 nest to get the second egg but thinks "Me' old 

 bird never catne back to lay iV ! 



How THEV GET THEIR CiRCrS MONEY. 



The other day I drove about ten miles to a 

 point of land on the lake shore and drawing on 

 my waders proceeded through the shallow water 

 to the little flat island of which I wrote last 

 year (Osprey, Vol. Ill, p. 83), when up from the 

 thick weeds jumped a couple of well grown 

 farmer lads. Thej' had preceeded me by a 

 couple of hours and their remarkable take 

 seemed to make it unnecessary to go over the 

 island again. There were eggs of the Common 

 Tern by the hundreds, and sets of Gadwall, 

 Baldpate, Shoveller, Pintail, Mallard, Lesser 

 Scaup and Teal, as near as could be judged, 

 with a few eggs of Wilson's Phalarope and 

 Spotted Sandpiper, all massed together in a 

 great pile without any marking or attempt to 

 preserve the integrity of the sets, nor could 

 either boy name the species found except "gulls, 

 ducks and snipe". Taking ofi" their coats and 

 spreading them on the g-round the eggs were 

 gathered into these, and they staggered away 

 under their burden to the mainland. I asked 

 what they were going to do with the eggs. One 

 of the boys stated, "There's a fellow over at 

 Devils Lake City that'll buy 'em and we're goin' 

 over circus day". 



A PAIR OF Smart Wiij.ets. 

 Another season has gone by and I haven't yet 



