48 



THE OSPREY. 



For the last third of our voj^ag-e the 

 shallowness of the water at that season 

 rendered our passag^e in the skiff impos- 

 sible, and while our g-uide generally 

 waded ahead and dragged the skiff along 

 the channel, which wormed its way be- 

 tween moss patches, sandbeds, and areas 

 of flags and lilies, my collecting friend 

 betook himself to the eastern shore and I 

 disembarked on the western bank, ready 

 to stow away in our baskets whatever we 

 might consider of value. The eastern 

 shore near the head of the lake is low 

 and heavily wooded, while the western 

 shore is lower and sparsely wooded. I 

 had not gone many steps along the 

 muddy, treacherous margin of the lake, 

 when a pair of Tree Swallows attracted 

 my attention with their graceful evolu- 

 tions about a low denuded stub whose 

 base was washed by the stagnant margin 

 of the water. The stub was only about 

 seven feet high, and six inches from its 

 top was a suggestive looking hole made 

 by a Woodpecker some preceding season. 

 While I reached upward to investigate 

 the contents of the cavity, the interested 

 owners chattered angrily about my head 

 as they fluttered to and fro in their ex- 

 cited manner, squeaking their protesta- 

 tion at my outrage of their premises, 

 and sometimes alighting on convenient 

 bare branches of adjacent trees. To 

 determine the contents of the cavity, it 

 was necessary for me to tear away the 

 decayed material at the entrance, and 

 with the yielding wood came several 

 feathers, of which the nest was largely 

 composed. Seeing the downy material 

 of their home floating in the air and on 

 the water, the birds swept down in pass- 

 ing and displayed their volatorial powers 

 by picking up the feathers, with which 

 they fluttered toward the entrance as 

 though to replace them in their despoiled 

 home. The cavity was seven inches 

 deep, and the nest had a foundation of 

 dried grass, on which was the bed of 

 downy feathers, the tops of the feathers 

 being placed upward so that the}- curled 

 over and almost hid the five fresh, snow}' 

 eggs. 



Having reached the mouth of Mud 

 Lake Slough, we securely tied our skiff 

 and then started on our tramp toward 

 Mud Lake. On either side was a low, 

 densely- timbered region, beautiful in its 

 wild and primeval nature. But I am 



prone to dilate on the beauties of nature 

 when ye editor wishes me to write about 

 birds. The one bird of this delig-htful 

 region is the Prothonotary Warbler, and 

 while my companion stopped to pick up 

 and stow awa}' into the capacious pockets 

 of his hunting coat a pair of mud turtles, 

 walking placidly down the slough, I 

 marked a low willow stub at my left. 

 The stub was only eight feet high, and 

 five feet from the ground was a neat round 

 hole one and a half by two inches. Striking 

 the stub with m}" hatchet, a female Warb- 

 ler darted from the entrance, and flying 

 toward the ground in the manner charac- 

 teristic of the species, she flew from one 

 fallen branch to another, stopping with 

 partly open, quivering- wings and out- 

 spread, fan-like tail, her half crouching 

 form suggestive of an enraged hen 

 "blufling'" to protect her brood. Tearing 

 away the rotten wood about the entrance, 

 I exposed a new cavity, probably made in 

 the preceding fall by Chickadee or Downy 

 Woodpecker, five inches deep, three inches 

 long by two wide. The nest was on a 

 slight foundation of moss, and was made 

 principally of fine dried grass. It con- 

 tained five incubated eggs, and even now 

 as I gaze on their delicate, faintly grayish- 

 white ground, and note their large 

 markings of pale cherry brown and faint 

 lilac, I can recall something of the pleas- 

 ure with which I took my third set of 

 Prothonotary Warbler. While I thus 

 ruthlessly harried this wildwood home, 

 the owners kept hopping about in the 

 lower foliage of the adjacent trees, chirp- 

 ping their displeasure at the proceedings. 

 The woods rang with the clear ringing 

 notes of the species, and we took a num- 

 ber of fine sets of the Warbler in our 

 tramp along Mud Lake Slough. 



Numbers of Great Blue Herons were 

 feeding along the margins of Mud Lake, 

 which is completely set among groves of 

 fine timber. They flapped hurriedly 

 away at our approach, jerking their frail 

 bodies at every flap of their long curving 

 wings, rising higher and higher as they 

 circled over the lake in the warm summer 

 air, and frequently one would soar in 

 broad circles, much after the manner of 

 the buzzard-hawks, with the base of the 

 neck laid back over the shoulders and the 

 long legs protruded back seemingly at 

 full length, these characteristics alone 

 enablinjjf the novice to distinguish them 



