92 



THE OOLOGIST 



TEXAS NOTES 



Monday, May 31st, a friend and my- 

 self visited the upper part of Lake 

 Wortli, figuring ttiat we would secure 

 a set of Green Heton eggs. We found 

 three nests of young birds vviiich 

 looked to be from one to two weeks' 

 old. Two of the nests were in willow 

 saplings and the third in a young cot 

 ton-wood which was growing in a wil- 

 low thicket. 



We also found two nests in willow 

 trees which were deserted. Under 

 each tree where the nests were we 

 found four broken eggs. It seem? 

 that these birds showed very poor 

 taste in selecting their nesting sites. 

 This also probably accounts for my 

 taking a set of Green Heron e:;gs in 

 July of last season 



Refering to the early set of Black 

 Vulture eggs 1 w -ote you about. About 

 thp middle of March I took another 

 set of Black Vulture eggs which were 

 so far incubated that it was impos- 

 sible to blow as a first class set of eggs. 

 Even the white feathers were formed 

 on the embryo. 



V. Daiiiel. 



AN UNUSUAL QUAIL. BOB WHITE 



• A cousin of the editor was plowing 

 corn not far from L.acon, Illinois, 

 about the middle of June, when a male 

 Bob-white Quail came from the bushes 

 at the edge of the field and ran up 

 close to the man and team and loi- 

 lowed them about insisting on keep- 

 ing as close to the man as possible for 

 sometime. 



Finally my cousin reached down 

 and picked the Quail up. It seemed 

 perfectly willing that such a perfo:m- 

 ance should take place. He plac;ed the 

 Quail on his front finger and started 

 talking to the bird, and kept this up 

 for some time, finally whistling "Bob- 



white" at him to which the bird 

 promptly responded in kind. 



My cousin and the bird exchanged 

 Bob-white whistles while the bird sat 

 clutching his finger for sometime, then 

 he set the bird down behind the corn 

 cultivator and it stayed there until he 

 drove on with his team, then coolly 

 trotted back into the bush. Truly a 

 most remarkable occurrence but one 

 which actually took place. 



— R. M. Barnes. 



A PECULIAR ACCIDENT 



The precarious existence which 

 birds lead was illustrated by an un- 

 usual incident which a neighbor relat- 

 ed to me, not long ago. It occurred 

 the last week in May, 1921. This 

 neighbor was living in a camp on the 

 edge of a woods. The camp was be- 

 neath a group of pines. 



On the morning of which I speak, he 

 happened to notice something flutter- 

 ing from a pine branch, not much 

 higher than his head. At first glance 

 he thought it was a bat, but on closer 

 approach he found it to be a Robin. 

 It was tied by one leg to the limb of a 

 tree and there it hung unable to move, 

 except to beat its wings. Upon ex- 

 amination a string was found to bind 

 the leg of the bird to the limb as tight- 

 ly as if tied in a hard knot by human 

 hands. Only by cutting the string 

 could the Robin be released. It flew 

 away, apparently uninjured. The 

 string was about a foot long and had 

 a bow knot tied in it. The bird had 

 undoubtedly been flying with it to its 

 nest, and because of the length of the 

 string, the entanglement occurred, 

 which so nearly resulted in the bird's 

 fatality. This shows that strings put 

 out for birds in nesting time should be 

 short and they should never be double 

 as this one was. 



Nina G. Spaulding. 



Jaffrey, N. H. 



