106 The Wilson Bulletin — No. 96 



bated eggs. Just five feet away and on the same level was 

 the owl nest, it being in a stub of the same tree, as can be 

 seen from the accompanying photographs. The cavity was 

 a foot in diameter, four feet in depth, and nearly perpendic- 

 ular. The single white egg, which rested on fairly rotted 

 wood and a few large owl feathers, seemed to have been in- 

 cubated for some time. 



On account of the peculiarity of the situation and condi- 

 tions T collected the Red-shoulder eggs and visited the tree 

 again a week later to obtain photographs and a full set of 

 Barred Owl eggs, if possible, but the original egg was broken 

 and the nest deserted. I have often wished that I had left the 

 birds undisturbed, and instead, had watched to see the nat- 

 ural outcome of this strange community. 



Ravinia, III, July 11, 1916. 



BIRDS BY THE WAYSIDE. 



BY ALTHEA R. SHERMAN. 

 Copyrighted by Althea R. Sherman, 1916. 

 In Palestine. 

 Our departure from Egypt for Palestine was in advance 

 of the migrating hosts of birds from the south and after 

 many of the winter residents had started north. As a re- 

 sult of these conditions there was a dearth of bird life in the 

 Holy Land during the first half of March, more pronounced 

 than one would expect in this region, to which H. B. Tris- 

 tram has ascribed 348 species. It has been said in a previous 

 chapter that the popular routes of travel in the Old World 

 are marked not so much by the birds seen thereon as by fail- 

 ures to see some of the commonest species, whose names have 

 been made familiar by the literature of foreign lands. These 

 failures are due to several causes ; the prime one must always 

 be inherent in an itinerary planned to please the majority of 

 sight-seeing travelers, whose stops are generally made in 

 those man-infested, bird-shunned portions of the journey, — 



