Notes from Field and Study 



353 



to the food-shelf. In a short time the pea- 

 nuts were all gone and I put out more. I 

 continued to feed them until they had 

 eaten, as I supposed, a pint or more of pea- 

 nuts. I noticed that each bird flew away 

 with one or two peanuts in its bill and soon 

 returned. Thinking that there must be 

 something wrong with the birds' appetites, 

 I went out to observe where they went 

 when they flew away and what they did 



One day I tied several peanuts on a string 

 and left them on the food-shelf. The 

 first Blue Jay to arrive took the string of 

 nuts and flew away to a nearby house-roof 

 and ate them. No other birds found the 

 food-shelf until December 20, when a Red- 

 bellied Woodpecker began coming for 

 feed, but it was always shy. Nuthatches 

 found the shelf late in January. — A. J. 

 Dadisman, Morgantown, W. Va. 



BLUE JAY At THE FOOD-SHELF 



with the peanuts. I found that the birds 

 were working diligently, carrying the pea- 

 nuts away and hiding them. They hid 

 them under the snow, on the ground under 

 a few leaves, under some weeds close to 

 the side of a house, under loose shingles 

 on a house-roof, and under leaves in an 

 eave-trough. I scraped away the snow 

 where I saw one of the birds hide a pea- 

 nut and found several which had been 

 hidden. When there was no food on the 

 shelf the birds would search out the pea- 

 nuts which they hid several days before. 



Nighthawk in New York City, March 28 



A Nighthawk was observed by the 

 writer, flying about over the Pennsylvania 

 Railroad Station in New York City late on 

 the afternoon of March 28, 1918. The 

 call-note was also heard several times. This 

 is a month earlier than the earliest date 

 recorded for the species near Orient, L. I. 



Mr. Forbush, in the extremely inter- 

 esting 'Bulletin of Information,' No. IV, 

 reports one in Demarest, N. J., on March 

 20, 1918. — Roy Latham, Orient, L. I. 



