THE NiDIOLOGIST. 



i55 



The trails of the Rail through the grass 

 were seen in connaction with every nest 

 and were to me very interesting* I flushed 

 a Rail one day but could see no nest near. 

 The whole thing was clear, however, when 

 I discovered that the bird had risen from its 

 trail. I followed it for about five feet and 

 came upon the well concealed nest, with its 

 eight eggs. As the eggs were warm it was 

 evident that the bird had slipped off on my 

 approach. This was an ideal Rail's nest. 

 The bird could approach or leave her eggs 

 only by the trail, as the little retreat which 

 contained them was well protected by walls 

 of growing grass and weeds except on the 

 one side. In places the trail was completely 

 arched over by the marsh grass. 



A KoDel Parasite. 



"N^ 



BY P. B. PEABODY. 



EW," I thought, until, upon refer- 

 ring, I found that "the doctors" 

 had antedated my discovery, and 

 that, as usual, they have long known 

 rather more than I, although I had found — 



But this is how it happened: 



Even vacation-time is busy for us poor 

 clerics. Returning to my Sunday work, 

 from a hasty visit to my Wisconsin home 

 and from a wistful glance into my precious 

 "pagoda," with its boxes of eggs and 

 shelves full of skins, I felt myself free, at 

 sunset of Saturday, July 2 last, for a hur- 

 ried reconnoitering of the meadowy, bushy 

 copses along a stream-bed, half a mile from 

 home. 



Across the withered pastures, with dried 

 grass crunching under foot, to the brink of 

 the narrow hillside, meadow-bordering — a 

 hillside as steep as narrow — and as densely 

 covered with hazel and dwarfy burr-oaks, 

 and swiftly down the obscure diagonal 

 cow-path, fairly losing itself at every pace 

 among the bushes, and then, almost at the 

 willowy meadow-margin, I startle a tawny 

 bird from the bush past which I brush — an 



awkwardly-fluttering, Thrasher- like bird, 

 which vanishes in an instant among the 

 willows. 



"Brown Thrasher, " I muttered calmly, 

 yet sharply stopping from sheer habit. I 

 part the bush tops, and the dim twilight 

 reveals a rough Catbird's nest containing 

 four small eggs of the Catbird and an egg 

 of a Cuckoo! Something must have hit me 

 real hard on the head just then, for I quick- 

 ly reasoned like this: a mateless, mother- 

 ly Brown Thrashei finds a Catbird home, 

 deserted in disgust at the depositing of a 

 foreign egg by some prying female Cuckoo, 

 lazy or hard pressed, and this Thrasher, 

 like the New York World's motherly ele- 

 phant, has "incontinently sat upon the 

 whole brood." Now, this is the character- 

 istic sort of blind categorical reasoning 

 which brings down upon the head of us 

 luckless amateurs the merited scorn of those 

 that are wise and truly scientific in these 

 m9,tters. 



But I grew ashamed myself of my snap- 

 shot reasoning, as falling dew and oncoming 

 darkness brought me to my senses, hasten- 

 ing me home. Then came the wiser second 

 thought. The Thrasher theory is plainly 

 untenable, having not one bare fact to sup- 

 port it. Hence the bird must have been 

 the Cuckoo herself. But no; the bird that 

 left the nest so suddenly and disappeared so 

 bewildernigly was too fulvous for a Cuckoo. 

 It must then have been — well, certainly not 

 a Catbird! 



Ah, now I have it: The bird was a 

 Wilson's Thrush, and to her the nest and 

 the four eggs belong. Now then, despite 

 the fact that I had never entertained the 

 faintest idea that the Wilson's Thrush 

 breeds so far south as this in Minnesota, I 

 had a Working Theory, which I took to 

 bed with me, and dreamed of it all night. 



Sunday afternoon. The after-dinner 

 quiet quickly losing its charm through its 

 loneliness, wife and baby being gone, I 

 threw off, through a stifling mid-day heat 

 which not even the coolness of a well-shaded 



