-48 



THE OOLOGIST. 



Bluebirds. All of them were silent and 

 still and seemed to understand that 

 something queer was going on. 



I will not relate how I caught each 

 Flicker. Suffice it to say that after a 

 few failures and about two hours' work 

 1 succeeded in catching five more 

 Flickers. 



As soon as I sprung the trap the first 

 time I heard a sort of fluttering on the 

 roof and on going out I could see the 

 birds who were on the barn flying off 

 in all directions, probably alarmed by 

 the falling of the trap. 



I put tha five Flickers in boxes and 

 fed them for a few days, but when une 

 of them died I concluded it would be 

 best to let them go as they would prob- 

 ably share the same fate soon. After I 

 let them go they disappeared and I was 

 rather sorry because I liked to watch 

 them. 



I think there is nothing more inter- 

 esting than to watch birds who are 

 placed in peculiar circumstances. 



Plax, 

 St. Anthony Park, Minn. 



Finding a Nest of the Hooded Merganser. 



I have known for a number of years, 

 that the Hooded Merganser has nested 

 along tha Grand River, but have never 

 been able to find one until last year. 



On or about the first of May, '93, 

 while fishing on the banks of the river, 

 I saw a female Hooded Merganser fly 

 down into the river to feed, and then 

 fly back into the woods about 30 rods, 

 where it was low and marshy, and light 

 in the top of an old elm stub over 40 

 feet high and 5 feet in diameter. I 

 afterwards told some boys of my dis- 

 coveiw. The next day we took climb- 

 ers and ropes and set out to climb the 

 stub, which I assure you was a very 

 difficult task. Finally one of the boys 

 succeeded in climbing it. 



There were two prongs at the top, 



and he found the nest in the larger one 

 about 4 feet down. The Duck was on 

 and flew off about the time he discov- 

 ered it. The nest was lined with feath- 

 ers and down and contained seven eggs 

 of a pearly white color. 



In order to get them he cut a hole 

 through the side of the tree on a level 

 with the nest and took them out that 

 way, lowering them one at a time in a 

 box made for that purpose. 



We found in trying to drill them 

 they were so hard that an ordinary 

 drill would not penetrate them. My 

 father made me a drill with which I 

 fir ally succeeded in drilling them, and 

 found them badly incubated, but with 

 care and patience I succeeded in get- 

 ting some extra fine specimens. The 

 largest measured 2.25x1.75 and the 

 smallest 2.12x1.56. 



Had I made oology a study ten years 

 ago, as I have since taking the Oolo- 

 gist, I could have made a very valu- 

 able collection of duck's eggs, as the 

 Hooded Merganser, Mallard and Wood 

 Duck nested all along the Grand River 

 and its tributaries, until within a few 

 years, Frank H. Lord. 



Saranac, Mich. 



A White Grackle- 



On October 10 or 12, 1893, a farmer 

 named Dean Miller shot a White Grackle 

 on his farm one mile west of here. It 

 was with a flock of Grackles that were 

 feeding in a corn field. He shot it and 

 then had a Taxidermist mount it. 



The bird is pure white without the 

 slightest trace of black, the bill is of a 

 cream color, the feet are white with a 

 grayish tint and the eyes are light yel- 

 low with black pupils. 



The bird's structure shows it to be of 

 the Grackle species and in all it is a 

 very handsome specimen. 



F. A. CoLBr, 

 Beatrice, Neb. 



