THE OOLOGIST. 



The Oologist. 



A Monthly Publication Devoted to 



OOLOGY, ORNITHOLOGY AND 

 TAXIDERMY. 



FRANK H. LATTIN, Editor and Publisher, 

 ALBION, N. Y. 



Corresponflence and Items of Interest to tlie 

 student of Birds, tneir Nests and Eggs, solicited 

 from all. 



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' Albion, Orleans Co., N. Y. 



Cuckoo Notes from Yates Go. N. Y. 



It seems to me a siDgular coincident 

 that Mr. Short should be having some 

 strange experience with Cuckoos at the 

 same time that I was. I refer to the 

 incubation of their eggs. My method 

 of ascertaining the state of incubation 

 in eggs that I leave for complete sets is:' 

 to hold the egg between ray eye and the 

 sun, for if the weather is dry it has 



been my experience that eggs are not 

 stained to any great extent so incuba- 

 tion might be three or four days along 

 and the eggs look fresh especially in a 

 dark tangle of foliage. On May 30,1898, 

 I found a nest— in a thorn bush— of the 

 Black billed Cuckoo containing three 

 eggs and as they usually lay four and 

 knowing that the first egg laid was 

 liable to hatch before the fourth egg 

 would be laid I was very careful lo ex- 

 amine each egg, the result being that 

 two eggs proved to be fresh, while one 

 egg gave evidence of containing a ti7iy 

 embryo, so I decided to leave them. I 

 visited the nest every day and the 

 fourth egg was ls,id on June 1st, yet I 

 left them for a possible set of five, but 

 as there were no more eggs laid' on 

 June 3d I took the four eggs. Upon 

 blowing them I found that incubation 

 in three eggs ranged from a little 

 bloody to small embryos, while the 

 other egg contained a fiilly developed 

 embryo that probably would havC; 

 hatched in a few hours, so I could not 

 save the egg. Now, as there was an 

 interval of two days between the laying 

 of the third and fourth eggs, and as- 

 suming that there was the same inter- 

 val between each egg, it wouid indicate 

 that the first egg was laid on May 26th, 

 so my conclusions are that the Black- 

 billed Cuckoos incubate their eggs in 

 nine days. Regarding above set I noted 

 the following in my data bcipk,. ."The 

 eggs were fresh on Decoration, Day, in- 

 cubation of Cuckoos eggs must be re- 

 markably short." 



■ ■ Another Cuckoo iacident came to my 

 notice on June 5th of this .year,, when I 

 found a Black-bills nest with the moth- 

 er bird sitting upon three young ones 

 and a slightly incubated <'gg and a 

 typical egg of the YelJow-bill, also on 

 same day I found a deserted Robins 

 nest containing an unmistakable egg of 

 the Yellow-billed Cuckoo. 



In January '93 or '94 I shot a speci- 

 men of the Horned Lark from a llock of 



