132 



THE OOLOGIST 



one other thing, however, that inter- 

 ested mo in this part of the slough. 

 The Black Terns were abundant and 

 were just beginning to nest. Now and 

 then a nest was found containing a sin- 

 gle egg, but the majority were either 

 empty or just building. I had always 

 before believed that the Black Tern 

 merely hollowed out a nest on a bog 

 and deposited her eggs there, but I was 

 now undeceived. As I was walking 

 along I happened to glance upward and 

 saw a Black Tern with something in 

 her bill. She was coming directly to- 

 ward me so I dropped down out of 

 sight in a clump of green rushes. Just 

 in front of me was the remains of an 

 old muskrat house now little more than 

 a bog— a capital place for a Tern's nest. 

 Here she alighted and deposited her 

 weed stem on the edge of a little hol- 

 low near one edge of the bog, then she 

 flew away again but soon returned with 

 another weed and deposited that. I 

 watched her for half an hour and dur- 

 ing that time she made fourteen trips 

 to the nest, bringing material each time 

 and twice her mate came with her. 

 When T left, the nest was not complet- 

 ed, but I think she had quit nest build- 

 ing for that morning. Many of the eggs 

 of this species are laid on a bare bog 

 with no nest at all, but in this instance 

 a nest was made and the materials, 

 which could have been had directly at 

 hand, were brought from a distance. 



So far we had taken only three sets of 

 eggs, Virginia Rail one-six and Yel- 

 low-headed Blackbird two-four. The 

 Blackbirds nested in the wild rice by 

 the thousands and these two sets were 

 interesting only on account of their 

 color — one was almost uniformly bluish 

 white and the other so heavily spotted 

 as to be almost chocolate colored. But 

 as we passed into the second slough less 

 common birds began to be seen. We 

 first saw a Horned Grebe, but were un- 

 able to locate the nest. It was very 

 tame and seemed to regard us with cur- 



iosity rather than fear. That was the 

 only Horned Grebe we saw at the slough 

 that day. Away out in the center of 

 the clear water was a dry-grass-cover- 

 ed island of about a half acre; thither 

 we directed our attention, and not with- 

 out results. The first find was a Cana- 

 da Goose nest, but the eggs had long 

 since batched, and we had to content 

 ourselves with the sight of five young 

 goslings about the size of Mallards^ 

 playing around their mother as if we 

 were old friends The mother, how- 

 ever, was far from fearless and stretched 

 and cackled around as if to say that she 

 was not at home to receive company 

 until the first of September, when the 

 open season begins. A pair — probably 

 the same pair — of Geese have occupied 

 that island ever since I can remember, 

 and I have an egg which I took from 

 their nest the twenty-seventh day of 

 March in '94 



It felt good to get out of the water on 

 to the dry land again. But we had not 

 found many eggs yet so we began to 

 tramp the grass to flush ducks. My 

 first find was a fresh set of four dark 

 olive-brown American Bittern's eggs. 

 The old bird flushed from right under 

 my feet, and although I had seen many 

 Bitterns' nests before, this looked the 

 fairest of them all, for it was the first 

 one I had ever found. On a little far- 

 ther a Pintail flushed from a set of ten 

 nearly hatched eggs. I have no Pin- 

 tail's eggs in my collection, but it was 

 useless to try to save these. How I 

 wished for my camera to get a photo of 

 them, but that, too, could not be had. 

 Meanwhile my friend had flushed a Bit- 

 tern from a fresh set of three eggs, and 

 had secured a nice set of nioe fresh 

 Blue-winged Teal's eggs. We half ex- 

 pected to find a Loon's nest here, but 

 in that we were disappointed. 



As we left the island we madH for the 

 Night Heronry. A«i we neared it hun- 

 dreds of Black-crowned Night Herons 

 rose with loud squawking and flew 



