This was all made plain the day following, 
when in passing the house of a young farmer 
in this neighborhood, he saluted me with “Heir 
lo Doc., don’t you want some little hawk’s 
eggs?’’ And he immediately brought out to 
me four white elliptical beauties. Upon ask- 
ing him where he obtained them, he pointed to 
the swamp oak thicket where my Short-eared 
Owl’s nest was located; and so the mystery 
was solved and all was well. 
The eggs on blowing, I found to be fresh and 
averaging in size about one and one-half by 
one and one-fourth inches. 
The young farmer mistaking the owls for 
hawks is about a fair sample of the knowledge 
the people in general have of the birds. Not 
knowing the names even of many of the most 
common birds and having still less knowledge 
of their habits. 
O.&O. XII. Oot. 1887 p 
Nesting of the Maryland Yellow- 
throat. 
BY WILLARD L. MARIS, WEST CHESTER, PA. 
A very interesting and quite common little 
bird of this locality, the Maryland Yellow- 
throat, ( Oeothlypis trichas ) has for some time 
bathed my efforts to find its nest. However, 
this spring, I found the long looked for treas- 
ure, a beautiful set of five eggs. 
This well-known bird arrives in this locality 
about the tenth of May, and after a few days 
spent in selecting a suitable nesting ground, at 
once commences building. During the incubat- 
ing period, the female, is seldom seen, unless a 
close approach to the nest, where almost her 
whole time is occupied, is made ; and even then 
as soon as the nest is touched she will vanish 
in the woods. The males may be seen fre- 
quently and quite often not in the locality of 
the nest, which, together with the fact of its 
being placed on the ground in the woods at the 
foot of a bush, and being sometimes domed 
over, renders it no easy matter to find it. 
On the 28th of May, of the present year, 
when on a collecting tour a few miles from 
home, I chanced to see a male Yellow-throat 
fly from the edge of a woods. It being a favor- 
able place for this bird of course I immediately 
began a search, but for fully fifteen minutes no 
trace of a nest could be found, and I nearly 
trod on it before the female flew away, thus 
showing me her hiding place. The nest was 
made chiefly of bark, and lined with a little 
