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JOURNAL OF MAINE ORNITHOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



lows, and made their nest and reared 

 their young unmolested, the Swallows 

 taking a hole in an apple tree for a nest- 

 ing site and rearing their young. 



The martin houses I have been familiar 

 with have not their old numbers breed- 

 ing in them . One I have watched for the 

 past fifteen years used to have eight or 

 nine pairs of Martins breeding therein, 

 but this year had only four pairs nest- 

 ing there. So far as I know they have 

 few natural enemies. I cannot explain 

 this decrease in numbers. 



Of the Geese, Ducks and Swans, very 

 little has been seen of this family. There 

 is a sportsman over on Cape Elizabeth 

 that wing-tipped several Canada Geese, 

 and captured them alive, and cropped 

 their wings and keeps them in a large 

 enclosure near Great Pond, together with 

 several pairs of Mallard Ducks, both of 

 which he uses as decoys to shoot over. 

 The Geese do not, I believe, nest in the 

 enclosure, but the Ducks have nests hid- 

 den here and there among the weeds and 

 bushes along the banks of a brook that 

 runs through his enclosure. It reminds 

 me of a hunter's paradise in some wild, 

 unexplored region where the Geese and 

 Ducks have not learned to fear the pres- 

 ence of man. These Geese and Ducks, 

 though not wild, are very interesting, as 

 they show very much of their natural 

 habits. 



I had a good opportunity to watch the 

 Swans in Evergreen Cemetery, and from 

 the superintendent of the grounds, and 

 from the patrolman or keeper on that 

 beat I learned quite a little of much in- 

 terest to me. As the Swans are on our 

 list for study, and no notes on the wild 

 birds are obtainable in these parts, I will 



give a few notes from my note-book. 

 They have five adult bii'ds and one cyg- 

 net at present. Several years ago the 

 superintendent ordered a pair of birds 

 from the superintendent of a park in 

 Philadelphia, Pa., and he replied that he 

 would send him a pair that were on their 

 way from Holland. They were not taken 

 from their crate in Philadelphia, but re- 

 shipped at once to Maine. The price was 

 $50 per bird. In all the public parks in 

 New England, New York, Baltimore, 

 Washington and some other places where 

 they have Swans, none of them breed. 

 The superintendent said the reason of 

 this is that the birds when they arrive 

 in this country are operated upon to pre- 

 vent them from breeding. It is interest- 

 ing to know that these are the only 

 breeding Swans in the above named 

 places. This pair hatched young each 

 year for several years, but none of them 

 came to maturity. When the female 

 would take the young on her back and 

 carry them to the upper ponds (she will 

 only allow them to stay on her back for a 

 few days, then they must swim for them- 

 selves) , each day in the forenoon, the first 

 thing the keeper would notice wrong a 

 cygnet would be floating on the water 

 with its neck or back broken. The next 

 day another would die as mysteriously, 

 and so on till all were gone. Superin- 

 tendent Floyd then told Mr. Stevens, the 

 keeper, they must if possible learn what 

 it was that killed the cygnets. So when 

 the young came up to the upper 

 ponds the next year, the policeman 

 watched them very closely, concealing 

 himself behind the shrubs and trees 

 near the ponds ; but they began to die, 

 and he could not watch them closely 

 enough to detect by what agent they 

 were killed. The last one remained, and 



