THE OOLOGIST. 



65 



Haunts," gives measurements as 2.10 x 

 1.65. Davie in fourth edition of his 

 check-list gives measurements as 1.90 x 

 1.50. I think Davie the more nearly 

 correct. 



As I have said before, this bird pre- 

 fers a low swampy wood near a stream 

 of water, and Mud Creek, near Utica, 

 answers all requirements. The creek 

 proper is not muddy, but near it is a 

 swampy wood, which contains about as 

 much mud to the acre as could be 

 found. In this or a neighboring wood, 

 a pair of Broad-winged Hawks have 

 nested for many years. 



Mr. F. J. Davis, of this city, first 

 found them nesting in Mud Creek in 

 1873, and since then has robbed them 

 many times, often twice in a single 

 season, and still they do not leave. 



In this section they prefer birch or 

 beech trees, but have been found nest- 

 ing in pine, hemlock and elm. 



Two years ago I found an Am. 

 Crow's nest in Mud Creek wood, con- 

 taining four eggs. May 2, 1890 I was 

 walking through the wood with an 

 oological friend, and chancing to think 

 of the Crow's nest, I instinctively 

 turned my steps in that direction, and 

 on approaching the nest was surprised 

 to see a Broad-winged Hawk in the act 

 of leaving the wood, having slipped 

 from the other side of the nest on my 

 approach. 



You may suppose I lost no time in 

 ■ascending to the nest, and found three 

 lavender gray eggs, spotted and 

 blotched with fawn chestnut and um- 

 ber-brown. Unfortunately in descend- 

 ing I broke one. 



Chas. C. Trembly, 

 Utica,' N. Y. 



The Extinction of Our Birds- 



In no way do our forests show us so 

 plainly how much we are indebted to 

 them for evenness of temperature and 

 rain fall throughout the vear than when 



a wooded country, covered with "the 

 forest primeval," gives way before the 

 industrious white man's axe. Spring- 

 freshets and summer drouths of the 

 streams whose perennial springs the 

 forests fed are the common occurrence. 

 That such changes have taken place, 

 causing great damage, no one can deny. 

 Congress, even, has been called upon to 

 protect the water supply of our rivers. 

 Besides this American push is draining 

 our swamps, irrigating deserts, level- 

 ling hills, changing the courses of rivers, 

 and building up as if by magic great 

 cities when but a few years ago waved 

 the farmers' harvests, or Nature, in all 

 her beauty, held high carnival and dis- 

 closed her teachings to but a sacred 

 few. 



The two great factors in this move- 

 ment are steam and electricity. These 

 changes have had a noticable affect on 

 all animal life, and birds especially, 

 causing species in some cases to change 

 their habits almost entirely, others to 

 shift about and appear in new localities, 

 and some to decrease in number. But 

 with all these more or less indirect hin- 

 drances man has placed checks on cer- 

 tain species in a more direct way. 

 Torrey says: "Every creature no mat- 

 ter how brave, has some other creature 

 to be afraid of; otherwise how would 

 the world get on?" Probally many 

 birds count man as their worst enemy. 

 States have passed bounty laws on cer- 

 tain species which occur within their 

 boundaries, thought to be harmful, but 

 it is a debatable question as to whether 

 they have received the benefit the out- 

 lay of such an amount of money ought 

 to bring. It is certainly no easy task 

 to tell which are useful and which are 

 detrimental, :and so complicated is the 

 evidence that one often finds that a cer- 

 tain species, which he supposed detri- 

 mental, after studyiug their ways prove 

 beneficial. Generally it might be said 

 that birds which feed on detrimental 

 plants, noxious mollusks, crustaceans 



