74 



THE OOLOGIST 



Poor-Will. Undulatingly she winged 

 her way down hillward, and with a 

 single phlegmatic chirp she alighted. 

 On a bit of bare ground, with flint chips 

 near, there lay one egg. Fore-prepar- 

 ed, I substituted for this a blown and 

 water-filled egg "^ a Mourning Dove, 

 (exactly the sort of thing that an as- 

 piring oologioal genius from Central 

 Kansas once tried to palm off upon me 

 as a Poor Will egg ! ) Later, another 

 Poor Will egg lay beside the dummy. 

 It was when I, on the strength ot 

 printed assurance from other bird 

 men, calmly set myself to work at the 

 task of photographing my sitting 

 Poor Will that I was handed the great 

 surprise of my life. Quite still sat 

 she, and with her eyes closed. (I 

 found this to be a standard trick of 

 hers). Nearer and nearer I moved 

 the camera, six feet, five feet, four! 

 Ah, very good! Mummy-like, the 

 feathered lady sat. Focussing' was 

 done. Plate-holder was inserted, and 

 slide, but, fairly without opening her 

 eyes my bird just flopped from her 

 eggs, and flopped down the hill, and 

 flopped down among the sumacs. And 

 this happened as many times as you 

 please! 



Another year, in a half-bare space, 

 quite paved with pebbles, and with a 

 delicate, fllmy plant overhanging, I 

 found a pair of young Poor Wills. 

 They were still in the down, and still 

 unfearing. Daily they moved, run- 

 ning, wings alift, but futile. And 

 daily I found them. About the third 

 day after my first finding the little 

 fellows generated fear. Plopping, (I 

 use the term advisedly), from where 

 they were, they would undulate, some 

 fifty feet, and then flop down among 

 the vetches and the thistles. Then I 

 would find them lying there "frozen," 

 eyes tight shut. Picking them up I 

 would carry them to the spot whereon 

 they were hatched, with photographic 

 intent. They would lie, when thus 



taken in hand, still "freezing," od 

 their sides, eyes tight shut, and then, 

 more likely than not they would, with- 

 out opening an eye, just flop out of my 

 hand, and so away, in quite the usual 

 style. 



He who undertakes the study of 

 birds without taking account of the 

 elements of temperament will misa 

 half the fun, and nine-tenths the 

 value. My two baby Poor Wills were 

 totally unlike in temperament. The 

 more active one was pugnacious, his 

 fellow, meek enough. (The battling 

 one 1 afterward proved to be a male, 

 his "mate," a female). But take it 

 all-in-all, I've never had a more stub- 

 born, intractible, impossible photo- 

 graphic subject than this same young 

 Poor Will. While still enough when 

 he had flopped down among the her- 

 bage and lay there, eyes closed, not 

 a member quivering, he was never 

 still for a' half second when I had set 

 him down, at ca'mera-focus distance, 

 for a "shot." 



Two years later, in mid- June, quite 

 in the same way in which my former 

 Poor Will eggs had been found, did I 

 flush another sitting bird. It was just 

 at night fall. For many seconds 1 

 could not find her eggs, although I 

 had mentally marked the exact spot 

 from which the bird had flown. The 

 spot was entirely paved wtih sharp 

 bits of flint and gypsum. Fairly egg- 

 color they were, if not, indeed, of egg- 

 shape. Ultimately, I managed to lo- 

 cate the eggs, some two feet from the 

 spot whence my bird had flown. One 

 of the two eggs had a tiny nest-crack, 

 caused by the dropping of the egg up- 

 on the flints, in the ovi-positing. Those 

 then may have been imposed upon, ere 

 now, by the impudent substituting of 

 Dove eggs for Poor Will eggs will do 

 well to note what I have observed with 

 the four eggs taken by me. The "pink- 

 ish tinge" ascribed by some, to Poor 

 Will eggs, a tinge that Is said, more- 



