THE OOLUGIST. 



79 



cacti are coveied with them. The bird 

 always takes his snail to convenient log 

 and proceeds to crack his shell and ex- 

 tract and devour the pulpy inhabitant. 

 When logs are somewhat isolated, the 

 ground adjacent'to them is almost com- 

 pletely covered with fragments of snail 

 shells; evidences of the Road-runner's 

 repast. In Texas this bird is almost 

 universal]3'^ as the Chaparal Bird or 

 Mexican Peafowl; sometimes it is called 

 the Ground Cuckoo, Snake Killer and 

 Paisano. As ageneial rule they nest 

 in the highlands, placing their nests in 

 a small oak tree or haw bush near the 

 brink of a hill; seldom on the summit. 

 It is rather a clumsy affair, the chief 

 constituents of which are usually sticks 

 seemingly placed in a careless manner; 

 very flat; a little depressed in the cen- 

 ter to receive'the complement of eggs; 

 generally 5-6 as wide as the nest of the 

 American Crow. The eggs vary in 

 number from two to twelve though it 

 has never been my fortune to secure 

 more than five. They are. of an ovate 

 shape and pure white, a typical speci- 

 men measuring 1.50 x 1.17. One pecu- 

 larity of this bird is that it leaves so 

 many of its eggs unhatched. Repeated- 

 ly, I have found single rotten eggs in 

 forsaken nests. Their breeding dates 

 extend from the latter part of March to 

 July. I intend making more rigid ob- 

 servations this season. 



James J. Carroll, 

 Lampasas, Texas. 



From Maryland. 



May 31, 1893, 1 found a Brown Thrash- 

 er sitting on her nest in some brier 

 bushes. 



She was very tame, aud would not 

 leave the nest until I pulled her tail, 

 aed then she merely hopped off and 

 perched about six inches away. 



If I had desired to do so, I could 

 easily have caught her in my hand. 



I looked in the nest and found a set 

 of three eggs, and after packing them 



in my box I went back to get a descip- 

 tion of the nest. The bird was on it, 

 and when I scared her off" I found an- 

 other egg. 



I took it, supposing I had a set of 

 fresh eggs, but much to my surprise, 

 when I cleaned them I found them all to 

 be badly incubated. 



The bird when first flushed from the 

 nest, must have carried one of the eggs 

 between her legs, which would explain 

 her reluctance to move more than a few 

 inches from the nest. 



******* 



Mr. Wm. Brown's note ou a flock of 

 Hummingbirds, in the June, '93 OoLO- 

 GiST, puts me in mind of something of 

 the kind I saw one day in May, 1892. 



There is a large Horse Chestnut tree 

 in the next yard to mine, and one morn- 

 ing my attention was drawn to the im- 

 mense number of "Ruby-throats" that 

 were flying about the blossoms. 



I looked for them the next day, but 

 saw nothing more of them. 



Wm. H. Fisher, 

 Baltimore, Md. 



A Series of Nests. 



When Howard Pitkin, of East Hart- 

 ford, was harvesting his tobacco last 

 September, he discovered upon a girder 

 in one of his sheds a queer specimen of 

 bird architecture, which seems to be 

 without parallel in ornithology. This 

 was a nest — or rather a series of nests — 

 of the common robin. There were 

 eleven in number, built close together 

 in one row and so interwoven that the 

 whole string could be lifted like a chain. 

 Evidently they were the work of one 

 bird, or one pair of birds, and seeming- 

 ly were built from center, as the center 

 nest contained the eggs, and the nests 

 at each end were in an unfinished state. 

 The others seem to be perfect in con- 

 struction, but differ very much from the 

 nests usually built by this bird — the 

 coarse sticks of the foundation and the 

 mud plastering of the inside being ab- 



