THE OOLOGIST 131 
snakebirds from a steamer’s deck on 
th Ocklawaha river. Once in Acad- 
emy days, Messrs. Brand, Rockwell, 
Hale and myself fired a volley from 
muzzle loaders across Poquetanuck 
cove at an indistinct quacking bunch 
and it was not till we had paid a 
round sum of money to a farmer for 
four crippled muscovies that we real- 
ized that we were trying to bag barn- 
yard fowl. 
September 6th Cyril Paine brought 
me a Carolina rail, picked up under 
telephone wires at the Neighborhood. 
I also picked up a sora at West Mys- 
tic with the same deadly wire-mark 
on its neck. Mrs. Murdock’s cat killed 
another rail from the ten young hatch- 
ed in William Brown’s meadow. These 
are my only English Neighborhood 
records, though I have heard the sora’s 
sharp call in July in our own cat- 
tail reeds, A female was covering 
from ten to fourteen eggs on Groton 
Long Point for five years in succession 
and I saw some of the tiny young 
taken down by the big Lower Field 
frogs. Several times half-fledged rail 
were seen in the marx meadow west 
of the Wildcat rocks, East Norwich. 
I could always find two or three pairs 
breeding at Poquetanuck cove, and 
from above the road at the cove I 
took a well-matted nest for the late 
Capt. Charles Bendire. 
The captain wished me to get for 
him a series of nests of the local ra- 
pacious birds, and at one time I had 
by heroic efforts secured for him typ- 
ical nests of red-tailed, red-shoulder- 
ed, Cooper’s, sharp-shinned, marsh, 
and broad-winged hawks—the broad- 
wings being the smallest in the bulky 
lot. The great horned owl’s nest had 
been used by redtails, and the barred 
owl’s built by red-shouldered hawks. 
With the aid of Capt. Thomas Potter 
and his lobster boat I made a stren- 
uous attempt to tie up and transport 
a fsh hawk’s nest from Sea Flower 
beacon. It was a monstrous affair, 
used for a generation, and in its com- 
position had bushels of cornstalks and 
lobster warp, yards of cables, dead 
crows, horeshoe crabs, deer’s feet, and 
bushels of seaweed and hanging usnea 
moss. The untimely death of Captain 
Bendire left these large nests uncalled 
for, and slowly falling to pieces in 
the cellar of 193 Broadway, they were 
finally consigned to the fire magazine 
of the steam heater. 
In the East Woodstock list we did 
not see the white-winged crossbill, 
which I never failed to find in open 
winter days in our own hemlock 
woods. An East Woo’stock man early 
last spring picked up an_ electro- 
cuted American crossbill in red nup- 
tial dress. I have had two woodcock 
killed by Woodstock wires, and nearly 
twenty mangled by ’phone and tele- 
graph wires along the seventeen miles 
of the Colchester turnpike. These 
birds when fresh I have had served at 
my table, thus eating game out of 
season without breaking the intent 
or letter of the close game laws. 
There are some flight woodcock al- 
ready around the few spring holes not 
dried up, an occasional bird in the en- 
Silage patches, but not any in the 
birches. No young bob whites have 
been seen here, and we think the 
early whistling cock quails could find 
no mates and went into other towns. 
heasants do not increase locally, and 
‘Voodstock hunters agree with Nor- 
» ich gunners that the young do not 
‘urvive the terrors of winter. But the 
trouse chicks, in moderate numbers, 
\ith crops gorged with late huckleber- 
ries, acorns, eyebright and _ white 
grubs, are large as the old “biddies” 
