112 Bird-Nesting 



CHAPTER XV. 



UNE 15th. — Back again at Moosejaw, having ar- 

 ;^ .^,,_J rived here last night from Rush Lake. I obtained 

 ^^i' the loan of a boat, and two of us set out to explore 

 feJ^^^J!?^ Moosejaw Creek. My companion, a local sports- 

 man, took his gun along wdth him. First we rowed 

 to a post that stood in the water, for here a wood- 

 pecker's nest had been found a few days previously. 

 On arriving at the post a few blows caused the woodpecker 

 to fly out of the hole and it settled on another post close by. 

 It was the red-headed woodpecker, and after some trouble I 

 reached the seven eggs, which I found resting on bits of 

 decayed wood, nearly a foot below the entrance. The eggs 

 were partly incubated. In this prairie region where trees are 

 scarce, woodpeckers make their nests in the telegraph poles 

 along the railway, and they frequently lay their eggs in holes 

 under the roofs of farm houses and barns. We shot specimens 

 of black terns, marbled godwits, red-winged starlings and 

 other common birds, and took several clutches of eggs of the 

 latter species. The nests were all suspended between growing- 

 rushes and were composed of fine rushes and grass. We 

 flushed a rusty blackbird from one of the numerous islands 

 at the ponds south of Moosejaw, through which the creek 

 runs, and later on found its nest, which was built on the 

 ground in a tussock of grass, and was made of fine grasses, 

 etc., and contained four eggs of a greyish green ground color, 

 thickly spotted with reddish brown and purple, averaging in 

 size l.OOx.75. The rusty grackle is common between Winni- 

 peg and Portage-la-Prairie, usually making its nest on the 

 ground like a song sparrow. The eggs vary to a great extent, 

 in some the ground colour is pale green, others have a grey 

 or olive green ground, and they are generally well spotted 

 and l^lotched with various shades of brown and purple grey 



