General Notes. 
j 
Behavior of a Summer Tanager. — I send the following item which my 
friend, Rev. Boniface Verheyen, of St. Benedict’s College, Atchison, 
Kansas, communicated to me a short time ago. 
“. . . I want to tell you about the peculiar conduct of a Summer Tanager 
( Piranga rubra ) which a number of the professors witnessed daily for 
several weeks. It was during the last week of May that the bird first 
began to attract attention. He would be seen to fly from window to win- 
dow on the north side of the west wing of the College, or perch on the 
sill, facing inward, as if peering through the window. Every few 
moments he would make an attack on the pane with his bill, as if he were 
trying to get at something or force his way through. When driven from 
one window he would fly to another. His attacks were at times quite 
vicious : he would fly from a neighboring tree directly for the window and 
strike the pane with a whack. Time and again he attracted my attention 
in my room, though the door was shut. Several times I took my stand 
directly in front of the closed window within a few feet of him and watched 
him closely at his seeming mad effort to peck holes through the pane. He 
did not seem to care much whether I stood there or not. I opened one of 
the windows on several occasions to see if he would come in, but he did 
household.” 
So far my correspondent. I might add that during my sojourn at the 
college, a Summer Tanager was a constant visitor to the grove on the 
College Campus, and nested there for a number of years 
Here is another little item in connection with bird lore that may be 
of interest. On one of my visits to the college, three years ago, I was 
informed that a certain bird had often been seen in the students’ chapel. 
As the chapel is skirted on two sides by trees, and the windows are usually 
open during the summer, it is not a rare occurrence to find a stray bird 
fluttering about on the inside. But here was said to be a case of a frequent 
visitor to the sacred enclosure — a bird with a religious turn of mind, so 
to speak. I examinied into the matter, and, sure enough, there was my 
bird, a female Yellow-billed Cuckoo ( Coccyzus americanus ) . She was 
not flying about, but stood on the floor, on which she had laid an egg, and 
to all appearances was standing guard over it. I secured the egg, which is 
now preserved in the college museutn. — PirmineJVI. Kodmly, Seneca , 
Kansas. Auk X Oct , 18^3 p_ 367-68 
