o2 



THE OOLOGIST 



which nip off the roots of the grass, cows 

 eat the grass, if the grass is not abundant 

 the cows' milk becomes of an inferior 

 quality, so that in certain districts it may 

 be said that the quality of the milk depends 

 on the presence or abseace of Rooks. — 

 Land and Water. 



Bombay Birds. 



A lady writes to hcind and ^Vater of 

 the sharp acts of a pair of Amadina Pim- 

 oJxlata : "Four years ago they flew in at my 

 window, having escaped from some ship. 

 They let me catch them, and put them in a 

 cage, where they have not only lived in 

 luxury and happiness ever since, but 

 hatched several broods of little ones. 

 Three or four days after the little ones are 

 hatched, papa picks up his progeny by the 

 scruff of the neck, and deliberately drowns 

 them in the drink-water hanging high in 

 the cage, and when they did not die fast 

 enouo^h pecked a hole in the back of their 

 little heads to make it sure. I said to my- 

 self, ''Perhaps it was because 1 looked into 

 the nest." When No. 2 brood arrived, 

 papa did the same, although I never went 

 near the cage, except to put the food in, 

 and they are so used to me, they never got 

 off the nest ; so I said, "Papa is jealous ;" 

 and when No. 3 brood came I removed 

 iiim, but their mamma performed the brutal 

 otBce for him ; so then I said, "Infanticide 

 in the family," and I have given it up in 

 despair. The eggs are like little sugar- 

 plums, and the little birds are the size of a 

 humming-bird. I have never been able to 

 keep the produce more than five days, yet 

 on opening the little corpses after the parents 

 have murdered them, they are generally 

 found to be full of fiood, chiefly millet in 



[lulp. and salad. 



. .^« » ■■ — 



Scarlet Tanager. — Pyrauf/a llnhra. 

 My pet whose name heads this brief no- 

 tice, has succeeded in his moult, and is now 

 a greeuisli ash on the scapular regimi with 

 ash on the back and rump. The under 

 parts and sides are a lighter asli. Chin, 

 throat, posterior and breast, cream color. 



He ceased whistling on the approach of the 

 moult and has been silent since. He still 

 prefers the milk paste with now and then a 

 moth, beetle, grasshopper, and house flies. 

 He is not quarrelsome, and still agrees well 

 with Canaries or other gentle birds. 1 

 mention these facts as the Tauager is well 

 suited as a cage bird. I will report again 

 if he lives through the winter.. — V. M. 

 Firov. 



Professional Oologists, 



J. M. W. 



In my cabinet is a set of the Sharp-shin- 

 ned Hawk's eggs seamed by the teeth of a 

 gray squirrel, and an incomplete set of the 

 Cooper's Hawk's bearing the " x mark " 

 of the same rodent. Now this leads me 

 to remark that when, in an amateur way, 

 a collector goes out to get a rare egg or so 

 for purposes of comparison, or to aiS in 

 scientific determination, he finds the field 

 fully occupied before him with professional 

 rivals. These are the pot-hunters of oolo- 

 gy. There are, of course, to be met with 

 the well-known scavengers, such as the 

 skunk, mink, weasel, and raccoon — the 

 Crow, Hawk, Owl and Gull; and there 

 are others still not so well known as fora- 

 gers on birds' eggs, who yet carry real de- 

 vastation in their track. But I will at 

 this time only speak of those I have actu- 

 ally run across in the field in a rather 

 thorough scouring of a New England neigh- 

 borhood in the breeding season for five 

 years. 



Thrice I've seen a black snake taking 

 eggs from nests : two of the nests' were 

 Robins' and one a Brown Thrasher's, and 

 they were in bushes four feet from the 

 ground. Neither snake was coiled, biit 

 his entire length lay along the tops of the 

 bushes ; there was no pretense of charming, 

 though the snakes in each instance were 

 very large. Have known no case of this 

 constrictor being coiled up in a Wood- 

 pecker's hole, according to the rather 

 startling description of one our earlier or- 

 nithologists. The gray squirrel, which 



