174 NATURE-STUDY REVIEW [11:4— Apr., 1915 



about the larger end. The eggs are about one and a third inches 

 in length, and an inch in thickness. 



The particular nest of which I write was built on an old musk- 

 rat house in a dense bed of cat-tails, but surrounded by several 

 feet of fairly open water where the muskrats had cleared the 

 vegetation away, the preceding year. The bird had carried 

 enough grass to make the lining of the nest on the coarse founda- 

 tion afforded by the muskrat house. The nest was found June 

 7th but the eggs were probably laid the last of May. 



June 23d, incubation was about completed. One egg had not 

 yet hatched, but there were two little birds in the nest that could 

 not have been over a day or two old. 



Fortunately the muskrat house being surrounded by fairly open 

 water, the little chicks could not run away and hide as they usually 

 do and I had several days in which to study them. I find myself 

 calling them "little chicks" for they looked so much like little 

 buff cochin chickens, brown with irregular markings of black. 

 The interior of the mouth was light red, the feet pink grey. The 

 birds did not like to stay in the nest. A solitary bunch of cat- 

 tails grew through the center of the old house, and the older of 

 the little birds spent much of its time in the shadow of this, as the 

 pictures will show. 



They were frequently at the water's edge, seemed to enjoy 

 standing in it, and would frequently drink. 



The old birds were not yet mottled from moulting and as they 

 are, colored alike, I could not distinguish between the father and 

 mother. One bird may have done all the work. 



On June 23d, this was the interesting problem confronting the 

 old bird. One egg yet remained to be hatched, while two little 

 chicks were old enough to require food. I was concealed nearby 

 for several hours and saw how successfully the old bird solved 

 the problem. It would incubate for several minutes, then dart 

 away, only being gone a few seconds and come back with food for 

 one or the other of the babes, then return to the nest. 



The food was nearly always a small dragon-fly with which the 

 large marsh abounded. The parent did not place the food in the 

 babe's throat as the song-birds do but handed it to the babe which 

 would seize the food as readily as a little chicken does. Some- 

 times the old bird would not alight, but hovering for a moment 

 with outstretched wings and feet hanging down, would hand the 

 food to the babe and dart awav for more. 



