THE NIDIOLOGIST 



Herons Eat "Hoppers." 



The stomach of a Green Heron brought me by a 

 farmer was found to be filled with grasshoppers, a 

 pest which has done much damage to the farmers' 

 crops in this locality the past summer. W. S. J. 



Boonville, N. Y. 



Cooper Ornithological Club. 



THE Club met at the residence of D. A. 

 Cohen in Alameda, September 7. Rev. 

 E. Lyman Hood, of Berkeley, was elected 

 to membership. The receipt by the Club of 

 the pamphlet, California Water Birds, No. /, 

 by L. M. Loomis, was 

 reported. C o r y d o n 

 Chamberlin read a pa- 

 per, entitled "An Inland 

 Rookery," dealing with 

 peculiar nesting habits 

 of Phalacrocorax dilo- 

 plius albociliatusm Lake 

 County, Cal. This pa- 

 perAvill appear in full in 

 a subsequent number of 



the NiDIOLOGIST. 



D. A. Cohen pursued 

 furthertheinquiry, " Do 

 Wading Birds Swim ? " 

 It was concluded that 

 certain of the waders 

 will take to the water in 

 quest of food. Mr. 

 Cohen noticedj in San 

 Francisco Bay on Au- 

 gust 26 a small bird, ev- 

 idently a Red Phala- 

 rope, deftly swimming 

 over the rippling water 

 near the ferryboat. Far- 

 ther out in the bay an- 

 other was noticed which 

 flew from almost be- 

 neath the boat and set- 

 tled not thirtyfeet away, 

 where it swam a few strokes, then easily arose, 

 and settled about fifty feet farther away. 



The Club will meet at Alameda, October 5, 

 at the residence of H. C. Ward. 



The Annex met at Pasadena at Mr. Arnold's 

 residence, August 26. The Flycatchers of Cal- 

 ifornia were discussed. Mr. Gaylord read a 

 paper entitled " Representatives of the Family 

 Tyrannida: in Los Angeles County, Cal." In 

 it eleven species were noted as occurring, as 

 follows : Arkansas Kingbird, abundant sum- 

 mer resident; Cassin's Kingbird, common spring 

 and autumn visitor ; Ash-throated Flycatcher, 

 common summer resident ; Say's Phoebe, win- 

 ter visitor; Black Phoebe, resident; Olive-sided 



FREDERICK M. DILLE, 

 Editor of our new " Colorado Department." 



Flycatcher and Western Wood Pewee, summer 

 residents; Western and Little Flycatchers, sum- 

 mer residents; Wright's and Hammond's Fly- 

 catchers, rare. The paper dealt principally 

 with the characteristic plumage of each species. 

 On May 25, 1895, a female Olive-sided Fly- 

 catcher was shot containing an almost fully de- 

 veloped egg, and the nest was located on a large 

 horizontal pine limb thirty-five feet up, and 

 fully twenty feet from the trunk of the tree, but 

 could not be secured. 



F. B. Jewett contributed a paper on the nest- 

 ing habits of several of the Flycatchers as ob- 

 served about Pasadena. The Arkansas King- 

 bird is given first in the 

 rank of abundance, with 

 the Black Phoebe sec- 

 ond. All the nests of 

 this Phoebe observed 

 under the eaves of build- 

 ings were on the north 

 side. One pair have 

 built on a barn for five 

 years, annually building 

 a new nest, and tearing 

 down the old one and 

 cleaning off the boards. 

 After the young are two 

 or three days old they 

 grow with astonishing 

 rapidity and have vora- 

 cious appetites. Mr. 

 Jewett estimated that 

 under ordinary circum- 

 stances a pair of these 

 birds would catch some 

 two thousand eight hun- 

 dred and eighty insects 

 each day, or about three 

 aminute, though at times 

 they would average sev- 

 en per minute, thus 

 making the total consid- 

 erably larger. 

 The Ash-throated Fly- 

 catcher was noted as shy and retiring of habit, 

 rarely nesting near a house. Woodpeckers' holes 

 seem to be in favor as nesting sites. The Little 

 Flycatcher was observed as a common breeder, 

 rarely nesting higher than ten feet from the 

 ground. The eggs usually are varied in stage 

 of incubation, as though they were laid at inter- 

 vals of about three days. 



Hammond's Flycatcher was found nesting at 

 Bear Valley by Mr. Judson. A small Flycatcher 

 was observed collecting materials for a nest, and 

 seven days after the nest was collected with its 

 contents. It was situated in a small wild-rose 

 bush in a canyon, and built of the same mate- 

 rial as the nests of the Western Wood Pewee, 



