76 



THE OOLOGIST 



etc. I remember well Capt. Bendire 

 pulling out a drawer of Tinamon eggs 

 and my astonishment at the first 

 sight of these marvelous eggs with 

 their brilliant colors and burnished 

 copperlike appearance. 



This Washington visit was not the 

 first time that I had met Bendire as 

 he had been at our house before this 

 date. To my youthful mind the fam- 

 ous oologist was brusque and dogmat- 

 ic in his manner with a marked Ger- 

 man accent, but impressed one as ab- 

 solutely honest and sincere, though 

 Bendire's knowledge of oology was 

 great he occasionally pronounced sets 

 to be wrong without sufficient found- 

 ation for asertions. 



I remember his looking at the Nor- 

 ris collection on one occasion and 

 picking out several sets of that 

 curious and beautiful type of the Cac- 

 tus Wren which has a white ground 

 color marked with large blotches of 

 reddish-brown. These he said were 

 the eggs of a long-tailed Chat. 



A set of Mockingbird with a very 

 deep greenish ground color marked 

 very heavily with a peculiar rich 

 brown was said to be Hepatic Tana- 

 ger. ^ 



In looking over the series of Paruia 

 he picked out one set which he said 

 was undoubtedly Black-throated Green 

 Warbler. My father pointed out to 

 him that this set was taken by a col- 

 lector who had taken dozens of sets 

 of Paruia, the famous "J. M. W." or C. 

 L. Rawson of Norwich, Conn., to give 

 him his real name. Bendire would 

 not be convinced however. 



Joseph Parker Norris, Jr. 

 Philadelphia, Pa. 



In California 

 In answer to your appeal for a copy 

 am sending you a little dope on the 

 Pacific Horned Owl, which if you 

 think of sufficient interest to publish 

 you may do so. 



On the 17th of March I decided to 

 look up a few nests of the Western 

 Red Tail, which a friend of mine told 

 me I might find in a clump of willows 

 and cotton-wood trees which were 

 about two and a half miles north of 

 Wasco, Kern Co., Calif. 



So on the afternoon of the above 

 mentioned date, I cranked up the old 

 lizzie and started out. It was only a 

 few minutes drive to these trees, I 

 soon had a nest spotted and drove 

 over to the tree which stood alone 

 about 200 yards from the others, a 

 large Red Tail was perched on a low 

 limb of the tree, but as I drove up it 

 fiew away and as it did I noticed a 

 fair sized rabbit in it's talons. (We 

 use the "It" because I was not able to 

 identify the sex). 



I strapped on my climbers and was 

 soon up to the nest, but "stung" it 

 was all nicely lined with bark, but no 

 eggs. Two other nests were examined 

 with the same old luck "No eggs." 



I decided I was a little early so I 

 started for home, and while driving 

 back through a part of the trees I saw 

 a large Pacific Horned Owl fly from 

 one of the trees or at least I thought 

 it did but did not have a chance to 

 spot the right one. Anyway I had 

 plenty of time and I decided to in- 

 vestigate, so I drove over into the 

 tree looking for a likely place for this 

 old bird's nest. 



I soon saw an old snag of a willow 

 tree and up in it just fourteen feet 

 was a place where a limb had broken 

 out leaving a little pocket about five 

 inches deep, although I did not expect 

 to find a Pacific Horned Owl nesting 

 in such a handy place but I thought 

 it would do no hurt to investigate, so 

 I stopped a few feet from the tree, and 

 went over to it and while I was look- 

 ing the situation over I saw another 

 hole in the tree about eleven feet up, 

 and just as I started to climb up, out 



