124 



THE OOLOGIST. 



looks back an instant wonderingly, 

 then dives quickly into the grassy maze 

 and no amount of beating can flush her. 

 A bit of white rag is hastily tied to the 

 ^rass, near where she rose and the care- 

 ful seai'ch begins. A dozen square 

 yards are slowly examined foot by foot 

 but vainly; when a last faint-hearted, 

 sweeping glance reveals the nest, half 

 crushed by my feet, well hidden in a 

 little grassy bog. It is naught but a 

 dainty, spirally wrought cup of slender 

 grasses, flush with the sphagnum tops, 

 but it holds five eggs, quite fresh, of 

 the clear-grounded, dark-blotched type. 



But the morning grows apace. Al- 

 ready the unwelcome half-hour bell at 

 school calls my return, and there is 

 nothing more for me today. The 

 Marsh Wrens chatter at me every- 

 where. Sparrows, Swamp Sparrows, 

 I am sure, are trilling in the distance 

 and winging near by and there are 

 many Bobolinks that scold at my in- 

 trusion. But nothing further calls for 

 alertness until a trio of Mallards, two 

 drakes and a female, pass up from the 

 lakes and circle, with much quacking 

 and quarreling in midair. The mate 

 soon chases away the usurper, while 

 the female excites my enthusiasm to 

 the uttermost by dropping, after many 

 futile circles far away into a very feas- 

 ible bit of the marsh, whence, however, 

 no thoroughness of beating avails to 

 arouse her. 



On the second morning the Bobolinks 

 failed me utterly, for a time, and I, dis- 

 couraged, began to trail the hills be- 

 jond the mai'sh for Grasshopper Spar- 

 row nests, an assiduous male flitting 

 with unusual ardor about a weedy 

 stretch of hill-side. But every bird I 

 aroused was merely feeding. Never 

 yet,in five seasons on Kansas and Minn- 

 esota pi'airies have I succeeded in 

 finding, with the rope, a nest of this 

 particularly abundant sparrow. 



Starting again across the marsh 1 

 flushed a female Bobolink at the sec- 



ond circling. She merely dashed into 

 sight for a quarter of a second as the 

 rope passed over her and then as I took 

 my turn at dashing she arose and flew 

 away. Another white rag and another 

 search and another well-made nest con- 

 taining another set of five unusually 

 clear of ground color, and remarkably 

 large blotches. 



Near by the locus of this nest is the 

 spot where two weeks before I found a 

 rarel}'' perfect nest of the Marsh Hawk 

 containing five unmarked eggs. The 

 nest lay snugly sconced amid a plat of 

 cat-tail flags being revealed hy the 

 mother bird's over zeal for returning to 

 her treasures. I found them late in the 

 day; part blew them to stop the incuba- 

 tion and left them to secure by stronger 

 light, good photos of the nest and eggs 

 and parent birds. But oh! those egg- 

 thieving small boys! — the eggs had dis- 

 appeared, when I returned next day 

 at noon. Regretfully, as I packed my 

 Bobolink eggs I passed the Hawk nest 

 and hastened on, fifty yards or more 

 scanning the bog-tops from prudence 

 and from force of habit. Of a sudden 

 what is this? — an opening scraped in 

 the sphagnum; a white egg, entirely 

 cleaned of its contents lying by its shat- 

 tered half leaving plain marks of more 

 than one beak, its unbroken side per- 

 forated with a small drill hole. Then 

 many a query rise to my mind: did a 

 skunk rob the nest and bury the eggs 

 he could not eat, and then, did a keen 

 eyed Forster's Tern spy out the imper- 

 fectly buried egg? Or were the Terns 

 themselves ever scanning the marshes 

 with eager eyes, first and last the 

 thieves? And what about those egg- 

 thieving boys? I am still pondering 

 the problem, as I anchor my rope when 

 a Marsh Wren, cocking his tail at me 

 from the crest of a neighboring weed, 

 arrests my attention by a certain pecu- 

 liarity of his plumage. The bird's im- 

 pudent spirit brings him nearer and, — 

 "Good Heavens!" 1 exclaimed, "these 



