THE OOLOGIST. 



263 



banks of the Ohio. The rnan at the 

 steering-oar hoped "the black rascal" 

 had broken his neck, and congratulat- 

 ed himself in the same breath for the 

 safety of his horses, which presently re- 

 gained their feet. Sambo, however, 

 leaped on the naked back of one, and 

 and, showing his rows of ivory, laugh- 

 ed at his masters curses. After a se- 

 ries of such incidents as these they fi- 

 nally reached Boston. 



Fred W. Parkhurst, 

 (to be continued.) 



Nesting of the Whooping Crane. 



The Great White or Whooping Crane 

 (Grits americana) is one of the wildest 

 and rarest of our large birds. Though 

 the Whooping Cranes are seen passing 

 over in the spring, and one is occasion- 

 ly taken at that time, and they are said 

 to have been not uncommon and bred 

 here in earlier times, the fact of their 

 occurrence in this vicinity at the pres- 

 ent time, was unknown to me until re- 

 cently. 



On May 24th. 1894, a boy offered to 

 sell me two Sandhill Cranes' eggs, which 

 he had found about a week previously. 

 The next Saturday, May 26th, I started 

 out to his place to try and collect some 

 eggs. In the afternoon we started for 

 a marsh, which a pair of White Cranes 

 had frequented all spring. The boy 

 said that quite a number of White 

 Cranes had been seen around there in 

 the early spring, but only one pair had 

 remained over. As we came up over 

 the top of a hill we saw in the middle 

 of a large marsh two white objects, 

 which looked like large rocks, but they 

 began moving, and had evidently seen 

 us as soon as we saw them, for they 

 soon rose up with slow, heavy flaps of 

 their great wings and flew over to the 

 further side of the marsh, where we 

 could see them stalking along'with long 

 strides as fast as a man could walk. In 

 fact, when they stood straight up, they 



looked almost as tall as a man. Occa- 

 sionally one would utter a whoop that 

 could be heard for a long distance. 



We waded along the whole length of 

 the slough fiuding some masses which 

 looked like Cranes' nests, but securing 

 nothing but a Grebe's egg, which I dug 

 out of a wet floating mass of rotten 

 vegetation. While wading through the 

 slough we scared up several small 

 flocks of Mallards, Pintails, Blue-wing- 

 ed Teals, and saw Wilson's Phalaropes 

 and Black Terns by the dozen. 



When we got near the nest end of the 

 slough,I started to wade down a branch 

 that went off towards the south. I saw 

 several Cranes' nests or muskrat houses, 

 I could not tell which, only a few rods 

 apart. As 1 stood up on one and look- 

 around I saw two great eggs on the 

 next one. 



All this while the two Cranes had 

 been stalking along on the hill quite a 

 ways off, keeping close together, and 

 seemed trying to attract our attention 

 by holding their heads down, dragging 

 one leg, and sometimes spreading their 

 wings. I yelled to the boys to come 

 over, as I had found a Crane's nest. 

 While they were coming up, the Cranes 

 were approaching neai-er until they 

 were about twenty rods away. They 

 would stand perfectly still for a minute 

 at a time, with the wings wide-spread 

 and held out from the body, and made 

 a beautiful picture with their graceful 

 snowy-white bodies and great black- 

 tipped wings. On our coming towards 

 them they flew a short distance and 

 lighted again. My companion and I 

 went around in opposite directions to 

 try and get a shot at them, but the 

 Cranes were too wary to be outwitted 

 by such maneuvers and before we could 

 get within forty rods of them they flew 

 up again and lighted over in the slough 

 nearer the nest. My brother, who was 

 sitting on the nest while we sneaked 

 around, said they then came up within 

 about ten rods from him, and would 



