THE OSPREY. 



Ill 



washer at A. Throw all these awaj'. The rea- 

 son for this will be seen when you blow a 

 heavily incubated egg. The small pieces of 

 bone may clog" in the hole D. Without the 

 valve it is the work of an instant to put your 

 thumb over the outlet E, when the water will 

 spurt out througfh the tip, taking the offending 

 bone with it. With the valve in place cleaning 

 is a ten minutes' job. 



To make the glass tips, get '4 lb. of glass 

 tubing about }4 inch in diameter and having 

 as thin walls as possible. It costs about 20 

 cents and will make sometimes 50 tips. Cut it 

 into pieces about six inches long, by scratching 

 one side with a three-cornered file and breaking 

 it with both hands, exactly as you might notch 

 and break a lead pencil To draw them a large 

 alcohol lamp or a "fish tail" gas burner may 

 do, but a small Bunsen burner, costing 35 to 50 

 cents is far better. If you have a Wellesbach 

 (incandescent) gas lamp, lift ofi^ the body of it 

 and you have just the Bunsen burner you want. 

 To draw them is easy, but to g'et the size you 

 want each time requires practice. At first I 

 made about two dozen and discarded all but the 

 best six. Heat the six inch piece in the middle, 

 rolling it over all the time until it is red and 

 bends easily, then take it out of the fiame and 

 pull quickly, to a distance depending on the 

 size of tube 3 ou want. You need a good many 

 of diff"erent sizes, as they will break occasion- 

 ally. A good size for ordinary use is .04 inch 

 in diameter, .02 will do for small fresh eggs, 



and .08 will empty anything out of any egg up 

 to the size of a crow's— with the help of the for- 

 ceps on an occasional bone. To rinse an egg, 

 put the tip into the hole, push the egg under 

 water and let the pump act until the water 

 comes up clear and clean through the glass. If 

 you don't like the smell of a big, bad egg do the 

 whole thing under water, it is sometimes 

 quicker. A thing which may bother one at 

 first is the membrane which surrounds the 

 yolk. This will stick in the fine tips, but it 

 sticks so tightly that if the tip is pulled out it 

 comes along also and gives no more trouble. 

 The danger of chipping the holes when putting 

 in the tip is slight, and after a little practice it 

 almost never occurs. When the tip is in, hold 

 the egg loosely in the left hand, then if the tip 

 wobbles in the right no harm is done. 



I work in the wash-basin in the bath-room, with 

 a dish of water before me for safety and rins- 

 ing. If there is a screw connection at the 

 kitchen sink it makes a fine place. I had a 

 plummer make a "reducer" to fit the pump and 

 the faucet out of an old female hose coupling. 

 It may seem from all these directions that the 

 method is clumsy and intricate. It is, how- 

 ever, simple and my own experience shows that 

 it can be worked with almost no direction at 

 all. 



I know, however, that when I began to use 

 this device I would have been very glad of some 

 such hints as these, and it is with this idea that 

 I offer them to other beginners in the method. 



General IHotcs. 



A ROOSTING METHOD OF THE INCA DOVE. 



The strang-e way in which Inca Doves 

 g"o to roost at night has recently come to 

 my notice. Nearly a month ago, when 

 the air at night was still chilly, I saw 

 seven of these little Doves perched on a 

 limb side by side. This in itself was not 

 strang-e, but directly upon the backs of 

 the first row sat three more Doves. At 

 another time I saw five in the lower row 

 and two on top. An examination of the 

 ground beneath showed it to be a resort 

 to which these birds gathered to spend 

 the cold niufhts of the winter months. 



Phoenix, Arizona. 



G. F. Breningek. 



birds. In nearly every instance the 

 stomachs contained remains of poultry 

 or game birds. The g-reater proportion 

 of adult birds to young- and their unusual 

 abundance is very remarkable from the 

 fact that in previous years it was rarely 

 the case when they have had more than 

 three or four birds, and some years none. 



Up to the present time, February 20, 

 there have been but six Snowy Owls 

 brought in to be preserved. The com- 

 parativte rarity of the Snowy Owls would 

 make the theory of severe weather and 

 lack of food hardly tenable in the case of 

 the Goshawk, and we must look else- 

 where for a suitable answer as to what is 

 just the cause of their abundance. 



H. H. Hathaway. 



Providence, R. I. 



UNUSUAL ABUNDANCE OF GOSHAWKS. 



On November 2, 1896, there was 

 brought into the store of J. W. Critchley, 

 Taxidermist, in this city, an adult Gos- 

 hawk, to be mounted. Since then, and up 

 to January 15, 1^97, he has had sent in 

 from nearby towns in Rhode Island and 

 Connecticut, 22 adult and seven young 



THE MURRE .at STEPHENTOWN, N. Y, 



A Murre ( Un'a troile) was captured 

 here on December 12, 1895. The bird 

 was found in an exhausted condition by 

 the roadside just outside the village and 

 easily caught alive. It was brought to 

 me two days later still alive, but refused 

 all food offered and died during the nig-ht. 

 Benjamin Hoag. 



