THE OOLOGIST 



109 



If you will help save the birds from 

 all their enemies, sign the pledge and 

 send it in to The Farm Journal, Phil- 

 adelphia, when the badge-button of the 

 bird-saving Club will be sent you with- 

 out cost. 



Odd Finds. 



April 15, 1913, I found a set of three 

 Red-Shouldered Hawks, two eggs be- 

 ing average size, with almost no mark- 

 ings and the third egg was just about 

 the size of a Sparrow Hawk and had 

 very little marking. First runt Hawk 

 egg I ever found in a good many years 

 collecting. 



June 14, 1913, found a set of Cedar 

 Waxwing with fcur eggs and one of a 

 Black-billed Cuckoo. 



Roscoe T. Giles. 

 Marlboro, Mass. 



Books Reviev.'ed. 



BIRDS OF OHIO, a revised cata- 

 logue by Lynds Jones, M. Sc, October 

 1903, Ohio State Academy of Sciences. 



This catalogue comes to our desk 

 late, eleven and a half years late, but 

 it is none the less a valuable contribu- 

 tion to the literature of the birds of 

 Ohio; being prepared by one of the 

 best known and most thorough of 

 North American systematists in the 

 line of ornithology. It has stood the 

 test of years as a standard authority 

 on the subject and will remain so for 

 a long time to come. It consists of 

 241 pages, catalogues 299 species un- 

 der the title of "The Birds of Ohio," 

 15 species as accidental, 4 as intro- 

 duced, 18 as hypothetical and 2 as ex- 

 tinct, the Prairie Hen and the Carolina 

 Paroquet, to which of course now may 

 be added, so far as the state of Ohio 

 is concerned, the Whooping Crane, 

 Trumpeter Swan and Passenger 

 Pigeon. 



The Knot. 



One of our most interesting beach 

 birds is the knot, or red-breasted plov- 



er, as it is sometimes called. Per- 

 haps, also, you have heard of this same 

 bird as the silver or blue plover. 



The knot is the largest of the bird 

 family called sandpipens and is said 

 to travel further in its annual migra- 

 tions than any other birds. Its flights 

 are made in spring and fall, mainly 

 along the Atlantic coast. One excep- 

 tion, however, is made when those 

 coming north in the, spring, via Texas 

 and Louisiana, take a route up the 

 Mississippi valley. The period of 

 their stay in the northlands is quite 

 short. The knots go north during the 

 latter half of May and begin to return 

 about the middle of July; then by the 

 middle of October all stragglers have 

 gone South again. It is an old fact 

 that the adults always go South first, 

 and the young follow sometimes later. 

 We do not find this true of wood and 

 upland birds, although several of our 

 coastwise migrants do the same thing. 



The knot seems to like much com- 

 pany, and when one finds a flock of 

 these birds he is almost certain to 

 see many turnstones and black-breast- 

 ed plover mingled in with them. Years 

 ago the knots were easily approach- 

 ed, being unsuspicious and trusting, 

 but now, since they have been slaugh- 

 tered in such numbers, they are very 

 wary and shy and avoid dangerous 

 places. In the fall, the young, in their 

 migrations southward, are easy vic- 

 tims for the first hunters along the 

 line, but they, too, soon learn caution 

 and become very restless and easily 

 alarmed, rising to flight at the least 

 disturbance. In some sections the knot 

 is referred to as the "placer miner" 

 because of its habit of closely follow- 

 ing the waves as they recede from the 

 beaches and picking up the shell fish 

 and other marine food washed up by 

 the surge. By nature they are very 

 persistent birds, and old gunners tell 

 us that when they were less wary 



