38 ^[EMOIRS OF THE NUTTALL ORNITHOLOGICAL CLUB. 



the foot of a turf-covered hillock, brown and bare. For several days I 

 visited the nest repeated!}', approaching under cover of the hillock with 

 the utmost care, only to find that the bird somehow slipped away unob- 

 served, leaving the eggs warm behind her. By June 4 two more eggs 

 had been added, and on June S I finally secured the bird and set, as well 

 as an indifferent Kodak photograpli of the nest in situ. 



I found another nest on June 2. It was just completed, and was 

 placed on a slope where a cattle path had left a projecting edge of sod. 

 There was almost nothing to conceal the nest, and it is possible its con- 

 spicuousness caused its abandonment before any eggs were laid. Another, 

 found by Mr. Mackay eight miles down the island, at ' No 3,' was reported 

 the same day, and contained four eggs. These I took on June 4, obtaining 

 a Kodak picture of them as they lay in the nest, wliich occupied an 

 unusual site. It was in a little hollow made by the wind, beneath a 

 short bit of board that lay on a flat stretch of bare sod scantily covering 

 the sand beneath. The bird was flushed, although she tried to skulk 

 away where there was not concealment even for a mouse. Later in the 

 day I reached the eastern lighthouse, near which I was shown two other 

 nests, with four eggs each, by the members of Mr. Tobin's family. One 

 was embedded in a bank of Crowberry near a small pond, the other in a 

 clump of rosebuslies. The last set I obtained was on June 11, when I 

 almost trod upon the bird as, slipping from the nest, she fluttered away 

 along the ground. It was in a tiny clump of budding bushes and grass, and 

 contained five eggs, probably two thirds incubated. Shortly before my 

 departure I found the beginnings of several other nests, marked by the 

 characteristic little cups made in the sand by the birds, in some of which a few 

 grass-blades had been deposited. One was in the midst of a prairie of Juni- 

 per, a few straws straggling fVom beneath an upraised spray attracting my 

 attention to the nest in the depths below. All the nests seem to be carefully 

 concealed, and there is so much ground over which the)' may be scattered that 

 it is no easy matter to secure them. I am told that the more favored 

 nesting sites are steep, grassy slopes, terraced often by zigzagging cattle 

 paths, where ample protection is afforded behind the lattice-work of 

 bleached and storm-matted grasses. Everywhere the trailing stems of the 

 Crowberry and Juniper lend a canopy for nests that sometimes repose in 

 beds of mosses and lichens, or the edge of some dense little clump of 

 bushes is chosen. 



No matter where situated, each nest is placed in a cup-shaped hollow 

 about four inches in diameter and fully two in depth, scratched in the sand 

 by the birds. It is compactly woven, and well calculated to keep out the 

 icy atmosphere that so often prevails on Sable Island even on midsummer 



