346 



THE OOLOGIST 



A Barteminin Sandpiper's Nest. 



Many were the trips afield, and many 

 more were contemplated, in my en- 

 deavors to find the nest, and secure a 

 set of eggs of this — South New Jer- 

 sey's Will-o'-the-wisp. 



On May 16th, 1912 dame fortune 

 smiled and smiled aloud as I gazed 

 upon something I never before even 

 dreamed of seeing; a cupped shaped 

 depression in the ground, containing 

 five eggs — fresh eggs of this specie. I 

 am unable to find any positive account 

 recorded of their eggs being taken in 

 this locality. But there are several 

 notices of the eggs and young being 

 seen. As far back as 1897 or 8 I re- 

 member a pair of old birds standing 

 on fence posts as wagons passed along 

 the road. These birds had young 

 about, but nothing was done until 

 1910. While gunning in another lo- 

 cality for the same birds in August, I 

 decided they must have bred there. 

 The following spring in the early part 

 of May, 1911, I observed the birds 

 about, and near a public road within 

 a quarter of a mile of the L. P. R. R. 



On the 30th of the month two others 

 and myself investigated with a long 

 drag rope. We entered a scanty growth 

 of timothy in a field. The old birds 

 greeted us by circling around near 

 by and whistling. The female coming 

 within gunshot at times, but the male 

 was not often so close. We were pos- 

 itive that the birds had a nest in that 

 field but failed to find it and went off 

 and hid. Then we would rush to the 

 place where we thought that the nest 

 was, but without results. As a last re- 

 sort I laid down closer and rushed 

 again with no new developments ex- 

 cept to pick up a wee bit of a downey 

 young that was skulking in the grass. 

 This settled matters for 1911, and we 

 all went home. 



For the year 1912 I planned a vig- 



orous campaign against these birds. 

 Early in the spring while the grass 

 was short I located a pair that had a 

 range of five mowing and two pasture 

 fields with other fields of cultivated 

 lands in between, about a thousand 

 acres in all, roughly speaking, consti- 

 tuted their range. 



I was confident that I had them lo- 

 cated for a homesite when I visited 

 them the last of April in a clover field 

 on the brow of a hill, but was doomed 

 to disappointment when one week lat- 

 er my assistant and myself explored 

 it with a drag rope. The following 

 Sunday we located another home site 

 — and another disappointment — an- 

 other drag this time at night, with no 

 result. Another evening we located 

 them in a new field in a low pasture 

 and another flew up from the sparce 

 growth of clover in an adjoining field. 

 We found nothing as it was getting 

 too dark. The bird jumped up prob- 

 ably thirty yards ahead of us. The 

 rope all this time had brought no re- 

 sult. Three or four mornings after 

 this at about eight o'clock I visited 

 this place, and had the set in hand 

 within ten minutes after entering the 

 field. The male bird on this occasion 

 stayed away off, the female which 

 flushed about five yards from the nest, 

 circled round uttering the usual nest- 

 ing note of the species, left and re- 

 turned again, circled for a few mo- 

 ments and left for good, alighting up- 

 on a fence post so far away that we 

 could hardly see her. 



The eggs were not pointing toward 

 the center as might be expected, but 

 lay about without order, and there 

 were really too many eggs for the nest 

 depression. It was so full as to seem 

 to be overflowing. The site was on 

 the brow of a hill in the least fertile 

 part of the pasture where the clover 

 was the thinnest. The location could 



