36 



The Avifauna, 



fresh eggs, though it may be later in a 

 particularly wet and cold season. 



March 31st of this year I took a set of 

 two eggs from a nest in a live oak 35 feet 

 up. The nest was about 4 feet across and 

 2 feet deep, being composed of oak limbs 

 and twigs of varying sizes. The nest was 

 lined with dry stubble and grass, and con- 

 tained by way of ornament a soap-root and 

 a mullein leaf. The nest was very sub- 

 stantially built and one could walk around 

 in it without fear. One egg of this set was 

 normal in size and appearance while its 

 mate was elongated, and not unlike a buz- 

 zard's egg in shape, though proportionately 

 larger. This latter egg was infertile; the 

 other being advanced in incubation. 

 Neither of the eagles made their appearance 

 during my visit, but doubtless returned 

 later to discover their loss. 



Average set of two egge of the Golden 

 Eagle measure 3x2.25 and 3x2,12 inches 

 respectively. Sets of three eggs must be 

 considered as uncommon, and are only 

 occasionally taken. Throughout Santa 

 Clara County are numerous old ornithologi- 

 cal landmarks in the shape of abandoned 

 eagles' nests. Some remain intact as yet 

 and are drifted full of dead leaves, offering 

 perhaps a nesting site to some stray di^do, 

 while the wrecks of others are marked only 

 by a ragged mass of dead sticks; the 

 weather-beaten and deserted castles of some 

 eagles of the past. C. Barlow. 



Santa Clara, Cal. 



— ■§— f<- — • 



The Road Runner and Snake. 



-u^. 



THE Road Runner, Chapparal Cock, or 

 Paisano as it is called by the old Span- 

 ish residents, was once one of the most 

 common sights in the lowlands of California, 

 but is now becoming very rare. This is 

 because of the stupidity of tourists who 

 want to murder everything new and the 

 cruelty of many who call themselves sports- 

 men, but whose only claim to the name is 



the possession of a fine gun. With this 

 they start out to murder everything of any 

 size that can fly or run and this harmless 

 and useful bird is one of their favorite 

 victims. 



Probably nothing in boiler-plate science 

 is now so firmly established as the idea that 

 this bird kills rattlesnakes by putting balls 

 of cactus in the coil of the snake, upon 

 which the snake strikes at it, hits himself, 

 and dies of his own poison. One of the 

 last acts of Prof. Spencer Baird was to des- 

 cribe this in an article in Harper's Maga- 

 zine, called "Our Guardian Birds," as an 

 actual fact, and the funny part of it was 

 that the artist — probably under his direction 

 — put the lobes of the prickly pear in the 

 bird's mouth. If the bird did such a thing 

 at all it would be with the balls of the 

 cholla cactus that are shed freely by the 

 plant and lie in plenty upon the ground, 

 remaining for a long time with spines as 

 strong and sharp as ever. But the lobes of 

 the prickly pear are not shed until the plant 

 has passed the stage of ability to injure, 

 anything. Lobes as fresh and stiff as are 

 represented in that picture could only be 

 torn from the plant by an ostrich and he 

 would want to sublet the job after the first 

 trial. The dear public does not want truth 

 in natural history. It wants something 

 astonishing. Truth is too tame. Probably 

 not a paper in the United States would pub- 

 lish a refutation of this old story, but a 

 rehash of it with a spice of big adjectives 

 would make a boiler-plate round of the 

 world. , 



The old story of raccoons catching crabs 

 with their tails is far more probable than 

 this for it contains nothing contradictory 

 to known facts. Crabs might take hold of 

 a tail as well as of a piece of meat on a 

 string and the tail might be twitched quickly 

 enough to land the crab on the bank within 

 reach of the coon's claws before it could 

 get back to the water. But the snake story 

 is contradictory to several well known facts. 



