THE OOLOGIST 



43 



it thus: In following usual methods — 

 that is obeying its native judgment the 

 bird attained a result which we might 

 more easily attribute to abstract reas- 

 oning. Yet I am not prepared to offer 

 any explanation of the steps whereby 

 tht^ nest came to its present shape and 

 appearance, as conclusive. That it 

 "was the result of much patient and per- 

 sistent labor I knew from the quantity 

 of mud and moss which was wasted 

 and lay on the floor below. The dang- 

 ling ends of more than a score of horse 

 hairs hung from the nest, a number be- 

 low hung over a foot and several over 

 two feet beneath. The frmge of mud 

 and moss of which some still adheres as 

 will be seen by the illustration was at- 

 tached to the horse hairs and dropped 

 down several inches on the front right 

 side No one was there when the 

 foundation of that nest was laid; pity it 

 it is, 'tis true, for I did not discover it 

 till near completion. 



I said at that time and will stick to 

 it yet, that I would rather have been 

 there when the foundation of that Pe- 

 wee's nest was laid, than present at the 

 dedication of the coi'ner stone of any 

 building I can think of. How did the 

 bird start about the building of this 

 nest? Where did it begin? How came 

 so unvisual an idea into its small head 

 which is supposed to be packed only 

 with "hereditary instincts?" How did 



«.it ever succeed in building the nest so 

 'square, with such a mass of material 

 beneath the rope? These are questions 

 I will not try to answer for you. You 

 will have to sit down with the picture 

 before you and try to imagine how it 

 ever was done. How much was the 

 woi'k of chance, how much of reason, 

 how much of instinct. I endeavored 

 to educate my bird, offering her con- 

 ditions a little more difficult, after tak- 

 ing her first nest away. But she evi- 

 dently had no inclination for such a 

 course of training and shortly she dis- 

 appeared. I would like to have forced 



her to build several more nests, trying 

 to bring about a psychical evolution in 

 one bird at least, and as birds return to 

 old locations, I have some hopes of see- 

 ing some trace of the peculiar depart- 

 ure in the nest of 1894, should the bird 

 again appear at the sugar house. 



Goethe says, "Nature reveals her se- 

 crets in monster's," And the final con- 

 clusion which I draw from this Pewee's 

 nest is. all animals are endowed with 

 enough innate intelligence to be equal 

 to any circumstance in which they 

 may be placed. 



This nest now hangs in the writers 

 museum, his most curious and interest- 

 ing specimen of bii'd architecture. 

 Ernest W. Vickers, 

 Ellsworth, O. 



Breed'ng Time of Our Birds in the Extreme 

 Part of Western New York. 



The very interesting article of Mr. 

 Ernest H. Short, of Chili, N. Y., tempt- 

 ed me to jot down a few of my observa- 

 tions in the same direction, and should 

 you find them worthy of space in the 

 OoLOGiST, then they are welcome tO' 

 you. 



The Great Horned Owl seems to be 

 our earliest breeder. I have taken a 

 fine clutch of three eggs, March 9, 1891, 

 incubation at least eight days. The fol- 

 lowing year I had no chance to visit the 

 same place but on the 9th of March, 1893 

 I took one egg from the same nest, per- 

 fectly fresh. 



March 8,1894. The same pair of Owls 

 had changed their nesting site into the 

 next wood where I found one egg in 

 nest, which I did not take, but on return- 

 ing on the 10th I found a fine set of two 

 fresh eggs. A friend of mine found an 

 Owl's nest also on the 10th, with two 

 eggs one-third incubated. Their breed- 

 ing time can safely be placed at from 

 the 1st to the 10th of March. 



I had occasion to shoot a Wilson's, 



