The OoLOGiST. 



VOL. XVII. NO. 4. 



ALBION, N. Y., APRIL. 1900. 



Whole No. 165 



The Oologist. 



A Monthly Publication Devoted to 



OOLOGY, ORNITHOLOGY AND 

 TAXIDERMY. 



FRANK H. LATTIN, Editor and Publisher, 

 ALBION, N. Y. 



Correspondence and Items of Interest to the 

 student of Birds, their Nests and Eggs, solicited 

 from all. 



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Nesting" Materials. 

 Continued from last month. 



The Snipes and Sandpipers make 

 shiftless nests and often make no pre- 

 parations for their eggs beyond the 

 selection of a slight depression in the 



field or marsh. The Plovers are still 

 more negligent, and rarely make any 

 preparation beyond the arrangement of 

 a few little gravel stones about the pros- 

 pective place of deposition, or perhaps 

 a few scratches in or about a slight hol- 

 low. But in the case of these gravel 

 stones, the watchful birds are quite 

 jealous, and will often rearrange the 

 misplaced ornaments if disarranged by 

 the interlopers. The same habit has 

 been noticed in the case of the Night- 

 hawks who often build among gravel 

 and who undoubtedly select these sit- 

 uations for the protective appearance 

 of the surroundings. The speckled 

 eggs of both the Nighthawk as well as 

 those of the Plovers and Sandpipers, 

 make it exceedingly diffir-nlt to discover 

 the location. Where the Snipes and 

 Sandpipers build nests the structures 

 are poorly made of grass and roots, and 

 at times a few twigs. In those birds 

 which carefully tend their young in the 

 nest for a period of from ten days to 

 nearly three weeks as is the case with 

 nearly all of the perching birds, it is 

 essential that the nest should be quite 

 durable. But with the precocious 

 birds, as the Grouse and Quail, Snipe 

 and Plovers it is not necessary to have 

 a stable nest, as the young can and do 

 run about the next day after they emerge 

 from the shells. As these birds never 

 remain in the nest or place where hatch- 

 ed more than a day or two, but wander 

 about, and often to quite a distance fol- 

 lowing the old bird, it would be a use- 

 less waste of time to construct a strong 

 nest. That the birds reason this out I 

 have not a doubt, and as an instance in 

 point would cite the observations that 

 we made on an island in the Indian 

 river, Florida, where a large rookery of 

 Pelicans was quartered. Many nests 



