208 



THE OOLOGIST 



is quite an interesting sight. Possibly 

 twenty to fifty birds will gather 

 around a single tall tree, in the woods 

 or in the open pasture and will go 

 around and around it in gradually 

 narrowing circles until at last one 

 after another drops to nest. Then 

 they draw the long bare head down be- 

 tween the shoulders until it is entire- 

 ly covered by feathers and out of 

 sight. There they stay hunched up 

 until morning. They will come back 

 to the same tree night after night. 

 When going away on a winter morn- 

 ing, the ice which has collected on 

 their broad backs in a sheet will fall 

 noisily to the ground. About the time 

 when the first rays of the morning sun 

 appears, one bird after another takes 

 flight. It starts out in a circle and 

 with only an occasional flap of the 

 wings they mount higher and higher, 

 followed at intervals by its com- 

 panions. The whole lot of them may 

 be in circles not over two hundred 

 feet in diameter. When the first one 

 gets up a mile or even more, it will 

 start off on its days fiight to be fol- 

 lowed by the others as they reach the 

 same altitude. 



Egg laying time comes about the 

 first of May around here. No nest is 

 built, but a hole is scooped out under 

 an overhanging rock or possibly in a 

 hollow tree that has fallen. The birds 

 will go back to the same spot time 

 after time when they are ready to 

 nest. Very many of them do not lay 

 every year and the older ones some- 

 times leaves several years go by with- 

 out a nest. The two eggs are spotted 

 and the markings of different pairs of 

 eggs are very distinct, so that the 

 different pairs of birds can be readily 

 identified by these marks. 



Last Spring T wanted the eggs that 

 were unusually heavily marked from 

 a certain pair of birds. A friend went 

 over to the hole and found but a single 



egg. He waited but three or four days 

 but as no second egg appeared he 

 gathered the one egg and sent it to 

 me. About a month later I went over 

 and visited the quarry and found 

 another single egg there. It was un- 

 questionably from the same bird for 

 I never saw such heavy marking, but 

 it was much larger than the first egg. 

 The two measured as follows: 3x2 

 inches and 2%x2 inches. The second 

 egg had not been incubated. Probably 

 the great difference in size is account- 

 ed for by the bird abandoning the 

 nesting place when it was first dis- 

 turbed and not paying again until she 

 was compelled to do so. Then she 

 deserted the nest. 



Not very far from town stands a 

 hollow maple tree and in it is a cavity 

 twenty feet above the ground that has 

 for years at intervals harbored a pair 

 of these birds and quits a number of 

 young have been raised there. If the 

 eggs are taken the birds do not lay a 

 second set that year though they do 

 not desert the place. 



The young when hatched are pure 

 white. Incubation of eggs seems to 

 be four weeks. When six weeks old, 

 the pure black pin feathers begin to 

 appear among the white down cover- 

 ing the young birds. The nest is a 

 dirty ill-smelling place, and if the 

 young birds are disturbed, they will 

 vomit the carrian fiesh with which 

 their craws are filled. This vomiting 

 is probably the result of fright. I never 

 knew a case of the old bird vomiting 

 when disturbed. They go off quietly 

 from the nesting place watching the 

 intruder from a distance. 



I never heard an old bird make any 

 vocal noise except occasionally as a 

 bunch of them get to quarreling 

 around a carcass, when they will at 

 times make a hoarse grunting sound 

 while picking savagely at each other. 

 The young birds when disturbed be- 



