THE OOLOGIST 



145 



The nests are rather loosely con- 

 structed shallow saucers of plant 

 fibres, stems, blossoms and down, fas- 

 tened to small twigs. One nest that 

 I found this season was entirely of 

 sage leaves and oak blossoms and was 

 so frail that it fell to pieces as I at- 

 tempted to remove it from the tree. I 

 once found a nest in a fork of a willow 

 where the single egg rested on the 

 rough bark of the tree with no lining 

 beneath. About twelve feet is the 

 average height of the nest from the 

 ground, many of them much lower. In 

 the San Fernando valley the Phainope- 

 la nests in stunted elders five or six 

 feet high, so low that other tree-nest- 

 ing species disdain to use them. 



The eggs number from one to three, 

 most often two. The shell is grayish, 

 greenish, or purplish white, spotted 

 heavily over the entire surface with 

 small specks of black, brown and lilac. 

 The average size is .88 x .66 inches, 

 and the shape is most often elliptical 

 or nearly so, the smaller end never be- 

 ing sharply pointed. 



The male seems to do most of the 

 nest-building and a good share of the 

 incubating, which lasts twelve to four- 

 teen days; while his spouse gathers 

 in the tree-tops with the other care- 

 free matrons of her tribe. 



The foregoing presents but a crude 

 picture of a remarkable bird; it re- 

 quires the wielding of a more skillful 

 pen than mine to do him justice; but 

 this rough sketch may serve to give 

 the reader some idea of one of the 

 most picturesque species to be found 

 in the West. 



D. I. Shepardson. 

 Los Angeles, Cal. 



John Stevens of Moscow, Pa., who is 

 in his eightieth year and in a pre- 

 carious state of health, enclosing a 

 subscription to THE OOLOGIST, be- 

 ing even at that age unable to get 

 along without our little publication. It 

 is an old adage, "Once an Oologist, al- 

 ways an Oologist." 



A Pleasure. 



Once in a while a real pleasure 



drifts across the desk of an Editor of 



a publication like this and it was a 



real pleasure to receive a letter from 



Fire-Lighting. 



In certain sea coast sections of our 

 country "fire-lighting" used to be a 

 very common method of getting shore 

 birds at night. Of course, this was be- 

 fore the enactment of laws protecting 

 game birds and wild fowl, when birds 

 visited us in great flocks unfrightened 

 and unsuspicious. 



The flocks, as is true of most birds, 

 rested on the flats at night. One man 

 would carry a lantern on which was a 

 very strong reflector; a second man 

 went carefully along and grasped the 

 birds as the light was turned on to 

 dazzle them. As the second man al- 

 ways kept in the shadow, the birds 

 were very much puzzled and did not 

 move, even though they saw many of 

 their number disappear into the dark- 

 ness. One would naturally think that 

 the birds would cry out when seized; 

 undoubtedly they would have done so 

 if they could, but the man who did the 

 catching always grasped them one at a 

 time by the neck so as to prevent any 

 outcry, and after killing them, he 

 placed them in a bag so as to prevent 

 any fluttering that might alarm the 

 others in the flock. In this way two 

 men could visit the flats and in one 

 night get hundreds of birds, but in 

 those days when shore birds came by 

 the thousands, and when even in Bos- 

 ton markets they brought only fewo or 

 three cents apiece, nothing was 

 thought of such useless and extrava- 

 gant killing. Later, when shore birds 

 began to be alarmingly scarce, laws 

 were passed protecting them and a 

 ban was placed on such methods of 

 slaughtering them. — The Classmate. 

 W. A. STRONG. 

 San Jose, Cal. 



