86 



THE OOLOGIST. 



their ordinary date is around Sep- 

 tember 15th. 



In my collection are several sets 

 of each of these birds, though my ex- 

 perience as an egg collector with Bul- 

 lock's has been very limited, most of 

 my sets having been taken during the 

 past three years at the outside, while 

 I have been collecting eggs of the 

 hooded for all the years of my oologi- 

 cal experience. A swaying gum tree 

 top, forty feet or more from the 

 ground, and no larger around than 

 your finger, is not an attractive place 

 for a collector, at least not for yours 

 truly, and there are few boys who will 

 climb to such nests for the small 

 amount of money which the average 

 collector can afford to pay for so 

 common a set. .Most of these nests 

 are made of horse and cow hair, 

 while in the sycamores they are most 

 beautiful gray affairs, pensile, of 

 course, as are the homes of all the 

 orioles and woven entirely from the 

 fibers of the inner bark of surround- 

 ing trees, mostly willows. The eggs 

 have been so often described as to 

 be well known to every collector east 

 and west, but no two writers give 

 their numbers as the same. The full 

 set of the first laying is almost in- 

 variably five, rarely six. I have heard 

 of one set of seven, but like the sets 

 of nineteen and twenty eggs of the 

 Valley Quail, I have to see these sets 

 in the nests to believe they were 

 really laid. They are of the palest 

 gray white, lined, not dotted or blotch- 

 ed with black of the deepest shade. 

 The second set, for the birds often 

 raise two broods, provided they get 

 an early start in the spring, is com- 

 monly four eggs, sometimes three, 

 rarely of five. 



With the hooded oriole this is all 

 different. The nests are seldom more 

 than twenty feet from the ground, 

 when built in palms and in banana 

 trees, not over eight or ten feet. 



When the material is available, they 

 are made of nothing but the yellow 

 fibers of the fan palm. Otherwise 

 they are made of plant down, bark 

 fibers, occasional feathers and gener- 

 al hoi polloi of whatever comes 

 handy. The eggs, so far as I can re- 

 call, are never more than four in 

 number, in many cases only three, 

 of a creamy white ground color, spot- 

 ted, blotched and lined with dark 

 shades of brown, not black. They 

 nest somewhat earlier than do Bul- 

 lock's but either the time of incuba- 

 tion is longer or else they take longer 

 to rear their young for the broods 

 are later in leaving the nest than are 

 those of Bullock's oriole. Taken all 

 in all, however, the two orioles of the 

 southern end of California are most 

 interesting, both from the standpoint 

 of the naturalist and of the man who 

 loves the beautiful in the animate 

 world. 



HARRY H. DUNN. 



The Quail Trap. 



The Quail Trap, .May 30, 1906 — 

 The lilac storm this week destroyed 

 many nests and killed some of the 

 birds. It was of inestimable value to 

 the farmer, relieving his fear of a 

 scanty crop of hay, but to the bird 

 homes in the growing grass it brought 

 havoc and ruin. Strong unmated 

 birds by shifting positions could find 

 shelter, but mother birds cover- 

 ing eggs in exposed places on the 

 ground and in trees were flooded, 

 chilled, and had their nests torn to 

 pieces. Grass Finches, song and chip 

 s; arrows, bobolinks, chebecs, purple 

 finches and larks suffered most. 



Not a song or twitter of birds was 

 heard all day Monday near the bunga- 

 low. Under her nest in a peach tree, 

 was picked up a least flycatcher soak- 

 ed and chilled almost to insensibility. 

 It was placed in a box by the kitchen 



