332 The Wilson Bulletin — No. 90 



The next few days I spent in some of the smaller canyons, 

 on the prairie and at Cheyenne on the east side of the Rockies. 

 But on June the 12th the early morning found us out again 

 for a longe-r trip to the Carrol lakes and Bamforth's lake. 

 Along- the road the same scenes as before, jackrabbits, badg- 

 ers, prairiedogs, circling Phalaropes and on the telephone 

 poles the Western Red-tailed Hawks, both old and young, 

 absolutely fearless, watching for gophers and prairiedogs. 

 Up on a long ridge we were driving and down in a kettlehole 

 wore two lakes and back of them, sloping down towards them 

 as far as the eye could reach, irrigated territory. Two Shov- 

 ellers went up before us, then a solitary Pintail and a pair of 

 Blue-winged Teals. We reached the first lake and right over 

 the landspit between the two lakes there came a beautiful 

 ^ong-legged bird and loud flutelike, notes protested agaius'. 

 ou-r intrusion. He settled at the water's edge and I beheld 

 one of Hie most beautiful and confid'ng water birds of the 

 West, an Avocet. We marched on and beheld a destruction 

 that was indeed sad, Killdeer's eggs, duck eggs floating every- 

 where in the irrigated area, the nests washed away, huncl-reds 

 of Yellow-headed Blackbirds nests, many destroyed and 

 water-soaked. Then a call by my companion, Mr. Gerhold 

 Wichmann, " nest with ten eggs " ! I hur-ried over to^ him 

 and sure enough there was the nest of a Yellow-headed Black- 

 bird with 4 eggs of the owner and G of the Cowbird. That 

 was quite a find and I collected the whole affair, but when 

 I tried to save them at home I found it to be an impossibility 

 for they were all too heavily incubated. And now we began 

 to hunt for nests systematically, selecting a certain spot as 

 a center and going away from it in ever widening spirals. 

 We were coming close together when up went a Wilson's 

 Phalarope and at the same time we spied the nest with 4 

 eggs. What mattered it that a vicious thunder-shower had 

 come over from the Sheep Mountains and) drenched us to the 

 skin, the glorious sun and the brisk wind would dry that 

 again. Here was a streak of luck and the pent up anticipa- 

 tion at last realized had to explode in a cry of exultant joy — 



