Jan. 181)0.] 



AND OOLOGIST. 



IL 



Nesting of the Florida Cormorant. 



It was with miicli interest I read Mr. C. J. 

 Pennock's artic-lo on tiiis subject in O. & O. 

 October number. As my experience is some- 

 what different from his it may perhaps be of 

 interest. 



A small colony of Cormorants have their nest- 

 in<'' places on an islan<l in the Myakka River, 

 Florida. This place I visited on June 8th, 

 188!). I found the colony consisted of a dozen 

 nests, which were placed in small man<>"rove 

 bushes. The nests were rather loosely built of 

 dead twi<;s without any lining'. Several of 

 the nests had no e<;t;s; these I found liad been 

 collected by another collector three days be- 

 fore my visit; he infoiined me that the ejjgs 

 were heavily incubated. 



Of tlie other nests three had young birds 

 probably three or four days old, three had 

 lieavily incubated eggs, and in one (a set of 

 three) incubation had just commenced, one 

 egg being almost fresh. 



The birds which had lost their eggs would 

 I believe have laid a second set, but a colored 

 ])lume hunter shot several and broke up the 

 rookery. He informed me that two of those 

 killed had eggs in them. T. T(»nasson. 



l'uiit;i (iorda, Fla. 



Nesting of the Pied-billed Grebe 



I noticed that in the September, 18S!), O. & O. 

 Mr. \Vm. G. Smith had an article on the nest- 

 ing of the Pied-billed Grebe {PoiUh/inhnK potli- 

 reps), in which he gave it as his opinion that 

 tliis Grebe incubates its eggs by the warmth 

 of its own body rather than allowing them to 

 hatch by the heat generated by the decaying 

 vegetation which usually composes the nest. 



We should all feel indebted to Mr. Smith 

 for this new informition, as it has hitherto 

 been .supposed that the Grebe invariably re- 

 lied on the decaying vegetation to furnish the 

 heat necessary to hatch the eggs. 



At Minneapolis, ^linn., I had ample oppor- 

 tunities to observe the nesting habits of this 

 bird, and in that locality, as far as my exper- 

 ience went, I found that the birds never sat on 

 the eggs in the daytime. Whether or not they 

 do so in the night I am unable to say. 



I have examined hundreds of their nests, 

 and in every case where tlie set was complete 

 the eggs were covered with the vegetable 

 matter. Incomplete sets of three, four or five 

 were generally lound uncovered. This is a 

 good point for the decaying theory it seems to 



me, as the birds did not want the eggs to begin 

 to incubate until the full complement had 

 been deposited. 



I have also noticed that the deeper the eggs 

 are imbedded in the refuse matter the more 

 incubated they are, a fresh set having just a 

 thin layer over them. I cannot account for 

 this unless the layer first put on loses its heat 

 after a time, and more is heaped on, for if we 

 dig into it we find that the deeper we go the 

 warmer it gets; and perhaps the Grebe realizes 

 that it is best to he certain that her already 

 incubated eggs do not become cold. But this 

 is only theory and will not be tolerated, facts 

 are what are wanted. 



I have never seen a Grebe on her nest al- 

 though I have often come suddenly and noise- 

 lessly upon it. At other times I have been on 

 the edges of swamps where the weeds were 

 thin, and I could see three or four nests at a 

 time, and although the birds were sometimes 

 around they were never on or very near them. 



I think it will be safe to say that the Grebe 



does not sit on her eggs in that locality, but 



relies on the decaying matter to hatch them. 



Let us hear from others on the subject. 



(rfn. G. Cantwell. 

 Lake Mills, Wis. 



Nesting Site of the Brown-headed 

 Nuthatch. 



In the October number of the O. & O. Mr. 

 Brimley records a majority of nests of this spe- 

 cies being found in stumps, etc., standing in or 

 close to water. I have collected a number of 

 sets of the eggs of this species, and have not 

 found such to be the case with those I found. 



My collecting ground was Southwestern 

 Georgia — Thomas County. The country is 

 heavily wooded, and when cleared land occurs, 

 nearly every such field contains stumps and dead 

 stubs from ten feet to twenty-five feet in height, 

 and it is in such situations that I found a large 

 majority of my nests, and apparently without 

 regard to the nearness of water. In hunting 

 for the nests I would look out for a cleared 

 field bordering a wood, and containing dead 

 timber, then, by skirting the edge of the tim- 

 bei-, I rarely missed locating a pair of birds, 

 and the site was generally within fifty or one 

 hundred feet of the woods, occasionally close 

 to the edge, and four nests were found in the 

 woods, but two of these were close to a trav- 

 elled roadway. The wood was quite open. 



I found these nests in stubs that were stand- 

 ing in water, open, shallow ponds, one of 



