80 General Notes. [j" n 



arrived first, even tried to keep the sapsucker away. At other times, the 

 sapsucker retaliated and kept the hummer away.. Seldom did the hum- 

 mer's presence keep the sapsucker from coming. There were at least 

 four hummingbirds that visited this one tree, and the combats between 

 them were highly entertaining. One male would not allow the other male 

 to approach while he was there. He would allow one female to visit, but 

 never the other one. Nor would the two females tolerate one another's 

 society. 



Very often the hummers rested quietly on the branches nearby, some- 

 times for long periods even when no bird was at the tree, neither did we 

 observe that they showed much agitation, swinging the head, as Bolles 

 describes. 



In drinking the sap, they most often hovered just below the hole, keeping 

 their bills in the hole and taking long draughts. At other times, they 

 clung to a small projecting piece of bark below the holes, and folded their 

 wings. 



The birds usually came from one of two directions and flew away in the 

 same directions, leading us to suppose that there were but two pairs which 

 came, and also that this might be one of a round of trees. 



A few butterflies, many hornets, and a host of smaller insects were at 

 the holes. These small insects were, I judged, the attractive feature to 

 the female Black-throated Blue Warbler who visited the tree several times. 



These observations extended from July 28 - September 10 and were not 

 solely fall records. We noted that the Black-throated Blue Warbler 

 would sometimes hover like a hummingbird before the sap but usually the 

 bird would alight on and proceed diagonally around the hole, more like a 

 nuthatch or Black and White Warbler and not after the fashion of a 

 woodpecker. — A. A. and A. H. Wright, Ithaca, N. Y. 



Starlings (Slurnus vulgaris) at Barnstable, Mass. — Mr. W. S. Holway 

 of Watertown, Mass., who has a hunting shanty on the Great Marshes at 

 Barnstable, communicated to the writer the following bird tragedy. 



The shanty which has not been in use during the summer was visited 

 on August 26 by Mr. Holway's brother, who was to look it over and put 

 it in order for the fall gunning. As he entered he heard a flutter in the 

 vertical part of the stove pipe, and some distance above the damper dis- 

 covered a small hole in which he thought he could see something moving. 

 Enlarging the opening to investigate, sixteen birds came flying out one by 

 one. On taking down the pipe he found a solid mass of dead birds from 

 the damper to the hole, and a dozen more in the horizontal run. At the 

 bottom of the outside chimney, into which the horizontal pipe fitted, were 

 at least fifty. In all, he said, there were over one hundred. Specimens 

 brought to the writer for identification proved to be Starlings. 



The birds made their entrance through the slots of the cap on the chim- 

 ney, and were evidently unable to fly up and out of the small pipe or to 



