160 



THE OOLOGIST 



with the surrounding earth. The 

 structure was made of dried grasses, 

 bedded witli soft pistils, and tlie ma- 

 terials were merely laid in to line the 

 depression. There were three eggs 

 partially incubated in this set. 



Nest No. 28. June 14. McCown 

 Longspur. This appeared to be Long- 

 spur day with me, for my last find 

 was a nest of the McCown's. As in 

 the other instances, the nest was 

 found by flushing the female acci- 

 dentally from the grass at my feet. 

 The site was the base of a tuft of 

 sparse lupine, and the nest was made 

 of soft dried grasses to line the de- 

 pression. There were four eggs in 

 this set, and one of them was a runt 

 of unusually small size. At my first 

 glance into the nest, glimpsing the 

 runt specimen, I thought of my old 

 friend, J. Warren Jacobs, whom I 

 knew to be interested in runt eggs of 

 all species, and I decided I had made 

 a find for him. When 1 prepared the 

 set, I sent them to Mr. Jacobs and 

 later received his acknowledgements 

 of the remembrance, so it appears 

 that Mrs. Longspur laid better than 

 she knew when she squeezed out that 

 little runt egg. 



A Day's Outing 



On the twentieth of June we start- 

 ed early for a large swamp lying some 

 ten miles away from home. Leaving 

 the inevitable Ford in a farmyard, we 

 soon began to hear a swamp Sparrow 

 a few rods off After searching care- 

 fully in the tussocks of grass I came 

 upon the nest, concealed in the thick 

 covering of a clump. The nest was 

 constructed entirely of dried swamp 

 grass and contained four nicely mark- 

 ed, slightly incubated eggs. We then 

 entered a thick, swampy underbrush, 

 abounding in tall snags, the former 

 home of a pair of Red-headed Wood- 

 peckers, where we saw a female 



Downy fly from her home in the top 

 of a dead tree. Unfortunately we had 

 forgotten the climbers and the stump 

 was devoid of convenient limbs so the 

 nest remained unexamined. 



White-eyed Vireos were common in 

 the oak saplings, but, although we 

 hunted hard, we were unable to find 

 a single nest. The sight of a Crested 

 Titmouse, rare in this part of New 

 Jersey, raised our hopes again and we 

 watched them eagerly. Soon the mate 

 appeared and my companion saw the 

 first bird fiy to a cavity, five feet up 

 in a dead stump. The nest contained 

 five newly hatched young birds which 

 we soon left to the care of the anxious 

 parents. 



The next discovery, a Night Heron's 

 nest, we found while following an 

 elusive Redstart. A platform of twigs, 

 twelve feet up, the nest held five 

 downy young Herons who watched 

 our approach with the greatest inter- 

 est. We looked at the little fellows 

 for a few minutes, then started back 

 towards the car. 



After a good meal we entered an 

 old barn where we counted nine oc- 

 cupied Barn Swallows' nests. In a 

 small marsh near the farm were two 

 Redwing nests, one held eggs and 

 young and the other three incubated 

 eggs. Half a dozen yards away was 

 a tussock with five fresh Song Spar- 

 row eggs. 



Leaving the farm we crossed the 

 road and headed for the woods across 

 the open fields. I had hardly walked 

 thirty yards when a Meadowlark shot 

 up at my feet, on looking down I saw 

 the eggs, carefully hidden in their 

 arched-over nest, which was sunken 

 into the ground. Walking through the 

 woods we heard many White-eyed 

 A^ireos, but when it came to finding 

 their eggs our failure of the morning 

 was repeated. I did however, make 

 one discovery, for, while looking into 



