62 Bulletin of Wisconsin Natural History Society. Vol. 1, No. 1. 
Mr. Robert O. Wanvig, a member of this society, has a mock- 
ing bird's nest and eggs in his. collection, which he found in 1897 
in a thicket just west of the city. The locality is a small sheltered 
grove, abundant in underbrush, the owner of which prevents all 
trespassing on the property, and for several years past Mr. Wan- 
vig has found several of the birds frequenting the spot each sum- 
mer, and has been in the habit of visiting the place evenings and at 
night to hear their song. 
Thus it would seem that there are a few secluded spots in the 
vicinity of Milwaukee which the mocking bird visits regularly 
each year, and there raises its young. Possibly a few may pass on 
to still more northern points in Wisconsin, but if so it has not, as 
far as w^e can learn, been as yet reported. 
Is it not then highly probable that Milwaukee is the most 
northern point in the United States visited regularly by the 
mocking bird? W. J. Bennetts. 
i 
Bird Tragfedies. 
The death of every wild creature is a tragic one, asserts Earn- 
est Seaton Thompson, and probably few of our birds live out the 
possible span of of their existence. Disease and old age are 
seldom permitted to run their usual course, for soon after the re- 
sulting feebleness or lack of vigilance manifests itself, the watch- 
ful hawk, owl, or fox, interferes, and the end is still a tragedy. 
Storms and scarcity of food, the accidents of migration, birds and 
beasts of prey, and man, are some of the agencies of bird de- 
struction. 
Two cases have been brought to our attention recently that are 
somewhat removed from the common. Mr. F. Kerchner, a mem- 
ber of the Wisconsin Natural History Society, has described to us 
the finding of the body of a golden-crowned kinglet, Regulns 
satrapa, in a cluster of burrs in a plant of the common burdock, 
Arctium minus Schk. Late in the fall the heads or burrs of this 
plant may be found bunched or tangled together near the extremi- 
ties of the branches, and against one of these the kinglet had 
evidently involuntarily flown, only to be seized by the minute 
hooks with which the burrs are provided ; its subsequent struggles 
to escape only entangling it more securely. 
Had this occurred to a larger bird, the latter would doubtless 
have escaped, carrying a number of the burrs with it and thus 
have_ been the agent of that method of seed dispersion which 
Arctium minus has so successfuUv evolved. 
