THE OOLOGIST 



43: 



it thus: In foUowiug usual methods — 

 that is obeying its native judgment the 

 bird attained a result which we might 

 more easily attribute to abstract reas- 

 oning. Yet I am not prepared to offer 

 any explanation of the steps whereby 

 the nest came to its present shape and 

 appearance, as conclusive. That it 

 was the result of much patient and per- 

 sistent labor I knew from the quantity 

 of mud and mo.^s which was wasted 

 and lay on the Hoor below. The dang- 

 ling ends of more than a score of horse 

 hairs liung from the nest, a number be- 

 low hung over a foot and several over 

 two feet beneath. The fringe of mud 

 and moss of which some still adhei'es as 

 will be seen by the illustration was at- 

 tached to the horse hairs and dropped 

 down several inches on the front right 

 side No one was there when the 

 foundation of that nest was laid; pity it 

 it is, 'tis true, for I did not discover it 

 till near completion. 



I said at that time and will stick to 

 it yet, that I would rather have been 

 there when the foundation of that Pe- 

 wee's nest was laid, than present at the 

 dedication of the corner stone of any 

 building I can think of. How did the 

 bird start about the building of this 

 nest? Where did it begin? How came 

 so unusual an idea into its small head 

 which is supposed to be packed only 

 with "hereditary instincts?" How did 

 it ever succeed in building the nest so 

 S(|uare, with such a mass of material 

 beneath the rope? These are questions 

 I will not try to answer for you. You 

 will have to sit down with the picture 

 before you and try to imagine how it 

 ever was done. How much was the 

 work of chance, how much of reason, 

 how much of instinct. I endeavored 

 to educate my bird, offering her con- 

 ditions a little more diflicult, after tak- 

 ing her first nest awaj'. But she evi- 

 dently had no inclination fov such a 

 course of training and shortly she dis- 

 appeared. I would like to have forced 



her to build several more nests, trying 

 to bring about a psychical evolution in 

 one bird at least, and as birds return to 

 old locations, I have some hopes of see- 

 ing some trace of the peculiar depart- 

 ure in the nest of 1894, should the bird 

 again appear at the sugar house. 



Goethe says, "Nature reveals her se- 

 crets in monster.a," And the final con- 

 clusion which I draw from this Pewee's 

 nest is, all animals are endowed with 

 enough innate intelligence to be equal 

 to any circumstance in which they 

 may be placed. 



This nest now hangs in the writers 

 museum, his most curious and interest- 

 ing specimen of bird architecture. 



EkNEST W. VlCKEKS, 



Ellsworth, O. 



Breed"ng Time of Our Birds in the Extreme 

 Part of "Westarn New York. 



The very interesting article of Mr. 

 Ernest H. Short, of Chili, N. Y., tempt- 

 ed me to jot down a few of my observa- 

 tions in the same direction, and >hould 

 you lind them worthy of space in the 

 OoLOGiST, then they are welcome to 

 you. 



The Great Horned Owl seems to be 

 our earliest breeder. I have taken a 

 tine clutch of three eggs, March 9, 1891, 

 incubation at least eight days. The fol- 

 lowing year I had no chance to vi.'^it the 

 same place but on the 9th of March, 1893 

 I took one egg from the same nest, per- 

 fectly fresh. 



March 8,1894. The sanie pair of Owls 

 had changed their nesting site into the 

 next wood where I, foun<l one egg in 

 nest, which I did not take, but on return- 

 ing on the 10th I found a tine set of two 

 fre.sh eggs. A friend of mine found an 

 Owl's nest also on the lOlli, with two 

 eggs one-third incubated. Their breed- 

 ing time can safely be placed at fron^ 

 the 1st to the lOth of March. 



I had occasion to shoot a Wilson's 



