JOURNAL OF MAINE ORNITHOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 3 



exterminate this species, it beiiij^: a practice that was followed in 

 some of the towns about Portland as late as in the sixties, and they 

 would then sell for two dollars a dozen in the Boston market. After 

 being netted, the birds were usually confined in some large out- 

 building and fed generously with grain. It required but a few days 

 of this treatment to render them as fat as the proverbial butter ball. 

 Nearly every community had its man skilled in Pigeon netting, and 

 during the fifty or sixty years the practice prevailed in this State it 

 was the means of bringing no small income to those who followed 

 it. The net, by means of spring poles, was deftly thrown over the 

 prepared bed to which the birds had been tolled by scattered seed. 

 The captives, in their confusion, would thrust their heads up 

 through the meshes of the net and remain entangled while the 

 trappers rushed in and securely pegged the edges of the net to the 

 ground with forked sticks. Removing them to the fattening pens 

 could then be done leisurely. As can be readily imagined, the 

 country boys found those eventful days when it was known that 

 some neighbor would "spring his net" or have a "killing", and they 

 would walk long distances to be participants or witnesses. To-day 

 there are men who would travel to the North Pole for the sight of 

 one living Wild Pigeon. 



Nest and Young of the Alder Flycatcher. 



By Cordelia J. Stanwood, Ellsworth, Maine. 

 In the summer of 1906, I spent a morning following a Northern 

 Yellowthroat, crawling over the ground on my hands and knees, 

 looking into every clump of alder, fern and meadow sweet in the 

 field opposite our house, but was unable to place the nest. At 

 last I decided to "give up" and go home. Crossing the swale, 

 I heard a sound like the pulsing of the wind, slightly out of 

 rhythm with the light breeze. I went back, and after waiting a 

 while moved again in the same direction. The sound was repeated. 

 This time it came from a jungle of tall alders, fern and meadow 

 sweet directly ahead. Looking through the bushes from the open 



