THE OOLOGIST 



43 



Cow Bird Notes From Virginia 



Previous to the opening of the great 

 European War, the cow bird was 

 quite a scarce breeder in Virginia and 

 my oological sets seldom were over- 

 burdened with these parasite eggs. 

 Long before the entry of the U. S. into 

 the conflict, Newport News was 

 selected as a shipping point for 

 horses and mules by the French and 

 British governments and later by our 

 government and some 550,000 horses 

 and mules were shipped across. 

 This industry naturally called for a 

 large acreage in corrals and around 

 the feeding trough for oats, which 

 were fed as short feed to these ani- 

 mals, congregated during the winter 

 months, thousand of winter cowbirds. 

 The extreme cold winter of 1917 and 

 1918 drove many thousand of these 

 birds into this excellent feeding 

 ground and they remained well into 

 the spring, before breaking up. 



Most of the horses and mules that 

 were on hand when the Armistice was 

 signed were sold soon afterwards and 

 with them disappeared the greater 

 part of the Cow birds. I was much 

 interested, however, in seeing if a 

 greater number of eggs would be found 

 in this section owing to the great in- 

 flux of these birds. In this ^ was not 

 disappointed for during the past sea- 

 son, nearly all small nests found con- 

 tained one or more eggs of this para- 

 site bird. While my egg collection 

 was enriched by several new species 

 containing cowbirds' eggs, the com- 

 munity has been the loser for they 

 destroyed many nice nests and sets, 

 and the cowbirds reared, took the 

 place of many beneficial birds. 



Harold H. Bailey, 

 Newport News, Va. 



The Maryland Yellow Throat 

 One day last June in mid-summer, 

 a light rain set in. After dinner it 



still rained by spells but it was so 

 quiet and warm that I concluded that 

 it would be a good stunt to go out on 

 a certain good sized mountain stream 

 nearby and take a good thorough 

 wetting for the privilege of catching a 

 mess of trout. When trout fishing a 

 person must go slow and carefully and 

 must often spend some time at d' x 

 pools trying to tickle the palate of thr, 

 big fellows. 



Because of his slow progress a 

 trouter often sees interesting birds, 

 nests, and animals. Among other 

 things I have come upon mink, coon, 

 rf ttlesnakes and porcupines and on 

 some occasions deer and have dis- 

 covered some mighty interesting nests 

 such as Winter Wren, Canadian, 

 Mourning and Black-throated Blue 

 Warblers. 



On this particular afternoon while 

 going through some heavy buck laurel 

 in the hemlocks to get behind a tree 

 on the edge of a deep pool I flushed 

 a bird off its nest. This nest was 20 

 inched up in the top of a low cluster 

 of laurels. It was a bulky nest of 

 grass and the four eggs were spotted 

 and wreathed. It looked more like a 

 Mourning Warbler's nest than any- 

 thing I could think of, so I sat down, 

 and in a few minutes the female re- 

 turned. Owing to the shade and the 

 state of the weather and the fact that 

 she kept low down in the laurels I 

 could not identify her and she didn't 

 look just right for a Mourner. 



Several days later on a clear sunny 

 day I returned and was surprised to 

 find a Yellow-throat at home. It cer- 

 tainly pays to positively identify all 

 finds. The Yellowthroat is one of our 

 commonest and best distributed warb- 

 lers in the summer and is found every- 

 wliere in bushy or weedy places. It is 

 one of the common birds in the slash- 

 ings and on the fire swept barrens and 



