April, 1881.] 



AND OOLOGIST. 



15 



I have noticed that while the owls have 

 been qnite abundant during the past win- 

 ter, the Snow buntings, Plectrophams ni- 

 valis, have been uncommon. It may be 

 that they have gone farther south, where 

 the deep snow has not covered the seeds 

 from which they obtain their food . while 

 the Owls having a different diet, find our 

 climate better adapted to their wants. It 

 would be interesting if some of the south- 

 ern readers of the Oologist would inform 

 us if they have seen them very abundant 

 in their locality. 



H. C. BuMPUs, Providence, R. I. 



Oological Notes. 



DouBLE-YoLKED Eggs. — In the specimen 

 paper you set;;t me I found a notice of a 

 double yolked Blue-bird's egg. I once 

 foiind a double yolked King-bird's egg. In 

 this specimen the usual markings were to- 

 tally absent, being replaced by a few large 

 blotches of a little darker tint than the 

 shell. Unfortiinately I broke it while de- 

 scending the tree. There were two other 

 eggs in the nest marked in the usual man- 

 ner. The nest of another one was lined 

 entirely with bunches of human hair. It 

 was near a barber shop. 



Short-billed Marsh Wren. — The only 

 nest of this kind I ever found had two dis- 

 tinct compartments, one containing an egg 

 and the other nothing. Do they always 

 build two compartments? 



Blue Birds : Their Building Habits. — In 

 July 1880 I found a nest of the Blue-bird, 

 placed upon some splinters, and without 

 any protection except that about two feet 

 above them was a trunk of a tree from 

 which the splinters proceeded. This is 

 the only time I have ever found a Blue- 

 bird's nest out of a hole. In our vicinity 

 they seem to have a taste for building in 

 letter boxes upon fences. Last year I 

 found four cases of the kind. 



Inquiry. — Last summer I saw in the top 

 of a hickory tree a nest looking like a 

 House sparrow's. It contained one egg 

 of the shape and size of a Swallow's which 



was pure white except at the large end 

 where it looked as if it had been smoked. 

 Indeed on first seeing it I thought it had, 

 but upon blowing the yolk was clear and 

 limpid, and besides the color would not 

 wash or scrape off, so it must have been 

 natural. The old bird was not near enough 

 to distinguish her colors. What sort of 

 an egg is it? K. P. McElroy, Toledo, O. 



Song Sparrow. — On the 24th day of May, 

 1879 I took at Fair Haven, Conn., a female 

 Sung sparrow, Melospisa melodia, together 

 with her nest and five eggs. She had 

 chosen for the situation of her nest the bed 

 of a railroad, where trains were continual- 

 ly passing, and had placed it not more 

 than ten feet from the track. But the pe- 

 culiarity to which I wish especially to call 

 attention is that while four of the eggs 

 were in size and color precisely alike, be- 

 ing a bluish white with spots of reddish 

 brown so confluent as to appear almost 

 uniformly of that color, the fifth is notably 

 greater in size and very different in color- 

 ation, having a more decided ground work 

 with its spots much larger and thinly scat- 

 tered. Again while the four eggs were 

 nearly fresh, this oddity contained a fully 

 formed embryo which was with difficulty 

 removed. N. A. Eddy, Bangor, Me. 



The Coloring Matter of Bird's Eggs — 

 The brilliant and remarkably permanent 

 color of the eggs of many birds has led 

 Liebermann to investigate its cause. He 

 finds that however widely different these 

 colors are from each other, they are due 

 essentially to but two coloring matters, 

 one a blue or green substance, probably a 

 biliary coloring matter, the other character- 

 ized by a remarkable absorptive spectrum. 

 These coloring matters are contained in 

 the first layer of the shell, often in several 

 thicknesses. When the shell is treated with 

 hydrochloric acid, the coloring separates in 

 flakes, and by treatment with alcohol a 

 strong solution may be obtained. With 

 the eggs of Gulls and Plovers an unsuc- 

 cessful attempt was made to obtain the 

 coloring matter pure. Scientific American. 



