136 



THE OSPREY. 



General Notes. 



PARASITIC HABITS OF THE BLACK-BILLED 

 CUCKOO. 

 May 20 I found a set of peculiar interest to me. 

 It was taken from a nest of Can/iim/is (ardiiinlis and 

 is composed of two eggs of the owners and one each 

 of Cowbird and Black-billed Cuckoo. I have never 

 as yet seen recorded a set in which both, or two, of 

 our parasites were represented ; though I might say 

 that this is the only evidence I have, from personal 

 experience, of the parasitic habits of either of our 

 Cuckoos. — C. Piper Smith, Anderson, Ind. 



CONTENTS OF AN OWL'S NEST. 



A Great Horned Owl was shot and killed on her 

 nest near this place by two boys. In her death strug- 

 gles she rolled one egg from the nest. I investigated 

 the nest two weeks later, and found it to contain two 

 broken eggs, thirty-eight Field Mice, and one Quail. 



An apparently snow-white Red-tailed Hawk was 

 recently seen here. — W. G. Savage, Hillshoro, Iowa. 



THE RED-HEADED WOODPECKER WINTER- 

 ING IN WISCONSIN. 

 As confirmatory of Mr. Brandon's statement in the 

 May OspREY — that the Red-headed Woodpecker win- 

 ters sometimes in Wisconsin, I wish to say that I 

 lived in a deep hollow, about five miles south of 

 Helena, Wisconsin, during the winter of 1864-5. 

 That my home was surrounded with large White 

 Oak trees, {Qnt'rciis allia,) and that a Red-headed 

 Woodpecker spent the winter in that glen. In the 

 coldest weather, when the sun shone, he (or she) 

 would perch for hours on the south side of a large tree 

 near our house. I did not see any other bird of this 

 species, save that one, during the winter. — J. C. 

 Elliot, Sicumivick, III. 



BARN OWL IN LICKING COUNTY, OHIO. 

 On October 2, i8g6, a fine male Barn Owl which 

 had been winged and captured near Alexandria, 

 about six miles from here, was brought to me to be 

 "stuffed." I secured it for four-bits and now have 

 it in my collection. This is the second one that I 

 know of having been taken in Licking County. The 

 other one was captured near Newark and exhibited 

 in that city during the first of February, 1892, as 

 " the great Monkey-faced Owl. Admission, locents." 

 Prof. D. S. Kellicott, of the Ohio State University, 

 tried to secure it on Feb. 12, but their price of $25 

 deterred him. 



The late Dr. J. M. Wheaton in his Report on the 

 Birds of Ohio, 1882, says in regard to its occurence 

 in this State ; " Rare visitor. Not over a half-dozen 

 individuals recorded " No doubt several could now 

 be added to this list, yet probably not enough to take 

 it out of the list of Ohio's very rare visitors. — N. G. 

 Button, Johnstown, O. 



tained four more eggs, slightly incubated. It was 

 June 22 when I collected these eggs, which made 28 

 eggs in all. The time since the first egg was laid 

 being forty-two days, the bird resting fourteen days. 

 — Gerard Abbott, Kni^lewood, Chi(fi_s;o, III. 



[This experiment, made by Mr. Abbott, has been 

 tried by other ornithologists ; and the bird, sub- 

 jected to these conditions, has been known to lay 

 even more than this recorded number of eggs. — Ed.] 



LARGE LAYING CAPACITY OF THE FLICKER. 



On May 12 I took one egg from a F'licker's nest, 

 which contained two eggs. The female continued 

 laying and I continued to relieve the nest of duplicate 

 eggs until twenty-four eggs had been deposited. The 

 bird then disappeared, and supposing that she had 

 left, I took the "nest egg." 



About two weeks later while passing the tree, to 

 my surprise I saw the female looking out of the hole. 

 Upon climbing the tree, I found that the hole con- 



PECULIAR NESTING PLACE OF THE RED- 

 WINGED BLACKBIRD. 



On the 4th of June, 1884, I found a nest of this 

 bird with three eggs in a hazelnut patch, fully 500 

 steps from the first body of water, a small creek. 

 This was in Summerfield, St. Clair County, 111. On 

 the 6th of June, 1893, I found a nest of this bird 

 with two eggs and two young in a willow nine feet 

 high. About 200 steps away was a pond affording 

 the usual breeding situations. This was near Eden 

 College, St. Louis, Mo. — W. F. Henninger, South 

 Webster, O. 



A TURKEY SWIMS. 

 While driving near the canal, one day last fall, I 

 frightened a domestic Turkey from the road, and in 

 trying to escape the bird flew into the water. It then 

 swam across the canal, back again nearly to the cen- 

 ter, and then over to the opposite bank. When it 

 finally reached the bank it had swum a distance of 

 about seventy-five feet. The bird was quite a rapid 

 swimmer. — W. S. Johnson, Boonville, N. Y. 



A QUEER SET OF CROW'S EGGS. 

 I recently collected a set of five incubated eggs of 

 the common Crow, so differently marked from any 

 Crow's eggs that I have seen, that I thought a des- 

 cription might interest some of The Osprev's readers 

 The ground color is grayish green and is thickly 

 spotted with pin-head sized spots of a slightly darker 

 shade, obscuring, in places, the ground color. The 

 larger ends are colored darker and have black spots 

 and lines on them. — F. J. Birtwell, Dorchester, Mass. 



A BABY RUBY-THROATED HUMMINGBIRD. 



On the afternoon of July 11, '96, as I was gather- 

 ing some flowers, I found a young Ruby-throat in a 

 gladiolus blossom getting honey. It showed no sign 

 of being afraid of me, so I lifted it out, and setting it 

 on my finger, found it was so young it could hardly 

 fly. I held it up to other flowers and watched it dart 

 its little thread-like tongue into the hearts of the blos- 

 soms, quickly gathering the sweets they contained. 



It remained among the flowers all the afternoon ; 

 and I picked it up a number of times. When it flew 

 from my finger it always went either to a limb stuck 

 in the ground for sweet-peas to climb on, or to a 

 plum tree near by, where the mother-bird would join 

 it ; whereat several times it seemed to put its bill in- 

 side of hers, while she acted as though feeding it by 

 regurgitation. 



About 5 o'clock I heard an unusual fluttering in the 

 yard, which sounded like a large moth tangled in the 

 grass. I started in search and soon found, not a 

 moth, but the baby-bird fast by the neck in a gladiolus 

 plant. It had evidently lost its balance in the flower, 

 and had fallen between the flower stalk and a leaf, 

 head on one side and body on the other. I carefully 

 lifted it out, but it was almost dead. I held it to a flow- 

 er, but it would not try to get honey, so I put its bill 

 in a drop of water ; it drank a little and soon revived 

 enough to fly to the tree a few feet away. It only 

 stayed there a few moments, then returned to its fa- 



