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THE OOLOGIST 



A Soldier Ornithologist. 

 News From the Mexican Border. 



That prince of bird men Lieut. Fran- 

 cis B. Eastman, U. S. A., sends us the 

 following note relative to the bird life 

 near Fort Sam Houston, Texas. It is 

 to be hoped that he returns without 

 misfortune and that before returning 

 he will give the readers of THE 

 OOLOGIST the benefit of many ob- 

 servations. 



"There is a chapparel grove near my 

 camp which is simply alive with birds, 

 but the heat makes it hard to do any- 

 thing. The most common birds nest- 

 ing in the grove are the Mourning 

 Dove, Mockingbird, Cardinal, Verdin, 

 Nighthawk, and some kind of sparrow. 

 In two-thirds of the nests of the Spar- 

 row and Verdin are one or two white 

 eggs about the size and shape of the 

 Bank Swallow. Please don't laugh at 

 my ignorance, but I am not very well 

 posted in Texas fauna, and my first 

 attempt to get acquainted resulted in 

 a good dose of chiggers, which most 

 ate me up. 



"I am going to try to save some sets 

 of the Verdin and also that sparrow, 

 and Scissor-tailed Flycatcher if I can 

 get some instruments. I saw a Road- 

 runner's nest, too, in a cactus bush, 

 with four addled eggs. It was desert- 

 ed of course — I think because of a big 

 storm we had here about a week be- 

 fore. 



"I have only had two evening 

 tramps in the brush, but hope to have 

 some more now that I have cured the 

 chigger bites. It is too hot to go out 

 in the afternoons and there is so much 

 going on in the evening that it is 

 hard to get out,— conferences, lectures, 

 calling, etc." 



A Late Letter Says. 

 On June 11th I went on a little ex- 

 pedition to a small lake some eight 

 miles west of here with a San Antonio 



friend, and got a pretty good idea of 

 the local fauna. Mourning Doves and 

 Mocking Birds are everywhere. I have 

 noticed no less than twenty nests of 

 each with a few hundred yards of 

 camp, in the mesquite buhses. I have 

 never seen half that many anywhere 

 in so small an area. Cardinal Gros- 

 beaks, Curved-billed Thrashers, Ver- 

 dins. Black-throated Sparrows and 

 Night Hawks are also nesting plenti- 

 fully close to our camp. So you can 

 imagine the chorus we have every 

 morning and evening. Some of the 

 birds sing at all hours of the day and 

 night. 



On our trip of June 11th the first 

 find was an Oriole's nest with four 

 young, about 12 feet up in a mesquite 

 tree. A little further along we found 

 several Scissor-tailed Flycatchers' 

 nests. One had 5 fresh eggs, one 4 

 young and the others well incubated 

 eggs. All of these were in mesquite 

 trees from six to twelve feet up. At 

 our next stop we found a Cactus Wren 

 with 4 slightly incubated and a Black- 

 throated Sparrow with one egg, appar- 

 ently fresh that morning. While look- 

 ing for another nest in the chapparel, 

 we fiushed a Poor-will, which flut- 

 tered along the ground as if she was 

 just leaving her nest, but we could not 

 find it. We reached the lake about 

 10 o'clock and started out in a row 

 boat. The lake covers about fifteen 

 hundred acres — I would say roughly — 

 and contains numerous patches of saw 

 grass, cat-tail weeds and willow trees 

 growing in shallow places. Also a 

 few scattered trunks of dead trees. 

 Several pairs of Scissor-tailed Fly- 

 catcher and Tree Swallows were nest- 

 ing in these dead trees some distance 

 from shore. The Swallow had young. 

 Two of the Flycatchers nests had 

 young; the others eggs from fresh to 

 well advanced. 



The weeds were alive with Coots, 



