724: REPORT OF STATE GEOLOGIST. 



lands. It seems probable, from the fact that adults have been found 

 accompanied by two young, that the number of eggs is two. 



Mrs. Jane L. Hine, Sedan, Dekalb County, informs me it breeds 

 in that county, and she has seen young birds July 15. Mr. W. 0. Wal- 

 lace writes me he caught two young which were unable to fly, on the 

 border of a small pond in Wabash County, in the summer of 1892. 

 Mr. H. W. McBride says it nests in Elkhart, and Mr. A. H. Kendrick, 

 in Vigo County. They begin to move southward in August, and pass 

 slowly through that month and all of September. I noted them at 

 Brookville August 13, 1881. Mr. Parker observed it at Mud Lake, 

 Illinois, September 19, 1894. Mr. V. H. Barnett found it in Brown 

 County October 5, 1897; Brookville, September 25, 1884. These are 

 the latest records I have for Indiana. The following interesting notes 

 by Dr. Elliot Coues are from Birds of Northwest, p. 500: 



"These Tattlers indulge on all occasions a propensity for nodding, 

 like Lord Burleigh or the Chinese mandarins in front of tea shops; 

 and when they see something they cannot quite make out, seem to 

 reason with themselves, and finally come to a conclusion in this way 

 impressing themselves heavily with a sense of their own logic. They 

 go through the bowing exercise with a gravity that may quite upset 

 that of a disinterested spectator, and yet through the performance, 

 so ludicrous in itself, contrive to preserve something of the passive 

 sedateness that marks all their movements. 



"This bobbing of the head and fore parts is the correspondent and 

 counterpart of the still more curious actions of the Spotted Tattlers, 

 or 'Tip-ups/ as they are aptly called from this circumstance; a queer 

 balancing of the body upon the legs constituting an amusement of 

 which these last-named birds are extremely fond. As often as the 

 'Tip-up' or 'Teeter-tail/ as it is also called, stops in its pursuit of in- 

 sects, the fore part of the body is lowered a little, the head drawn in, 

 the legs slightly bent, whilst the hinder parts and the tail are alter- 

 nately hoisted with a peculiar jerk, and drawn down again, with the 

 regularity of clock-work. The movement is more conspicuous in the 

 upward than in the downward part of the performance; as if the tail 

 were spring hinged, in constant danger of flying up, and needing con- 

 stant presence of mind to keep it down. It is amusing to see an old 

 male in the breeding season busy with this operation. Upon some 

 rock jutting out of the water he stands, swelling with amorous pride 

 and self-sufficiency, puffing out his plumage until he looks twice as 

 big as natural, facing about on his narrow pedestal, and bowing with 

 his hinder parts to all points of the compass. A sensitive and fastid- 

 ious person might see something derisive, if not actually in- 



