THE OOLOGIST 



359 



leads us so oft on a wild goose chase. 



Well, I spotted for future a wild old 

 patch, where I vowed I would find and 

 rob Mr. Nuthatch; So during the fol- 

 lowing fortnight I read, all the dope 

 about Nuthatches any one said; And 

 when I was posted, it seemed that they 

 beckoned; So I hiked for Lynn Grove 

 mi .May twenty-second; 



I left pretty early for I wanted to 

 hear, the very first "quanks" so I could 

 get near, when they started out on the 

 morning's trip, and by following up I 

 could get a straight tip; 



I soon got my bearings and found a 

 fine pair, but to watch two at once 

 proved a crazy nightmare; I named 

 one the female and followed her 

 tracks but if she had method, it sure- 

 ly was lax: She slid down the tree 

 with a skip and a hop and the next 

 tree ascended from bottom to top; 

 She hunted and stuffed and ate 'till 

 I'm blessed, I made up my mind she'd 

 forgotten her nest; But at last the 

 reward for patience was mine — she 

 struck out for tall timber in a bee line; 

 She swung round an open place — lit on 

 a tree, and there she revealed her real 

 home to me: Of course 'twas the big- 

 gest old tree in the wood; She'd have 

 chosen a larger tree yet if she could; 

 And as if to remind of the tree's 

 mammoth size, She'd pop in and pop 

 out and thus tantalize; Now that tree 

 was at base a full seven feet through, 

 which made the full distance around, 

 twenty-two. With the Nuthatch's 

 nest about fifty feet up, a draught of 

 real bitterness filled full my cup; 

 With nothing but wings could your 

 servant e'er hope, to reach that fine 

 set or perhaps with a rope, let down 

 from an airship might one succeed, 

 in performing the miraculous nerve- 

 thrilling deed; 



I confess that my very first words 

 were "the devil," but my zero-like 

 spirits 'rose when I saw level, with a 



forty foot crotch of the great tree, an- 

 other prong in a nearby tree just 

 like the 'tother; Now the tree that 

 was nearby wasn't so big, and to climb 

 it was easy as dancing a jig; A six- 

 teen foot sapling was cut down and 

 lifted, forty feet up in the crotches 

 and shifted; It dropped into place and 

 thus spanning the bayou, was good as 

 an iron bridge o'er the Ohio; I put my 

 hand into the fur nest and "Stung" — 

 For I counted two, four, six, eight 

 featherless young; Take a lesson, dear 

 reader, from this my sad fate — Go for 

 Nuthatch's eggs at an earlier date. 



Isaac E. Hess. 

 Philo, Illinois. 



1912 Field Notes. 



April 24th. Found a nest of the Star- 

 ling in a large cavity in an old apple 

 tree. This nest was remarkable from 

 the fact that the eggs were nearly five 

 feet from the entrance of the cavity, 

 the whole interior of the trunk being 

 hollow to within a foot of the ground. 



On April 26th I visited my Purple 

 grackle colony, before reported in the 

 Oologist, and found it to contain the 

 nests of about twenty pairs. These 

 nests were huge bulky affairs of mud 

 and coarse grasses shaped into deep 

 and substantial cups. A curious fact 

 is that the older nests in my collec- 

 tion, taken in 1898, are very frail and 

 loosely built of twigs, leaves and a 

 very small quantity of mud. What 

 has caused this change? I have often 

 wondered, for the nests are so entire- 

 ly different that one would never im- 

 agine that they were constructed by 

 the same species. 



May 27th, and again on May 31st T 

 was walking through the same field of 

 hay at about 6 A. M. and on each oc- 

 casion I flushed a Bobolink from a full 

 set of five well marked eggs. These 

 are the First nests from which I have 

 flushed the bird directly from her 



