April, 1881.] 
AND OOLOGIST. 
15 
I have noticed that while the owls have 
been quite abundant during the past win¬ 
ter, the Snow buntings, Plectrophanes ni¬ 
valis, have been uncommon. It may be 
that they have gone farther south, where 
the deejj snow has not covered the seeds 
from which they obtain their food. while 
the Owls having a different diet, find our 
climate better adapted to their wants. It 
would be interesting if some of the south¬ 
ern readers of the Oologist would inform 
us if they have seen them very abundant 
in their locality. 
H. C. Bumpus, Providence, R. I. 
-- 
Oological Notes. 
Double-Yolked Eggs. —In the specimen 
paper you sent me I found a notice of a 
double yolked Blue-bird’s egg. I once 
found a double yolked King-bird’s egg. In 
this specimen the usual markings were to¬ 
tally absent, being replaced by a few large 
blotches of a little darker tint than the 
shell. Unfortunately I broke it while de¬ 
scending the tree. There were two other 
eggs m the nest marked in the usual man¬ 
ner. The nest of another one was lined 
entirely with bunches of human hair. It 
was near a barber shop. 
Short-billed Marsh Wren. — The only 
nest of this kind I ever found had two dis¬ 
tinct compartments, one containing an egg 
and the other nothing. Do they always 
build two compartments? 
Blue Birds; Their Building Habits.^ —-In 
July 1880 I found a nest of the Blue-bird, 
placed upon some splinters, and without 
any protection except that about two feet 
above them was a trunk of a tree from 
which the splinters proceeded. This is 
the only time I have ever found a Blue¬ 
bird’s nest out of a hole. In our vicinity 
they seem to have a taste for building in 
letter boxes upon fences. Last year I 
found four cases of the kind. 
Inquiry.— Last summer I saw in the top 
of a hickory tree a nest looking like a 
House sparrow’s. It contained one egg 
of the shape and size of a Swallow’s which 
was pure white except at the large end 
where it looked as if it had been smoked. 
Indeed on first seeing it I thought it had, 
but upon blowing the yolk was clear and 
limpid, and besides the color would not 
wash or scrape off, so it must have been 
natural. The old bird was not near enough 
to distinguish her colors. What sort of 
an egg is it? K. P. McElroy, Toledo, O. 
Song Sparrow..— On the 24th day of May, 
1879 I took at Fair Haven, Conn., a female 
Song sparrow, Melospisa melodia, together 
with her nest and five eggs. She had 
chosen for the situation of her nest the bed 
of a railroad, where trains were continual¬ 
ly passing, and had placed it not more 
than ten feet from the track. But the pe¬ 
culiarity to which I wish especially to call 
attention is that while four of the eggs 
were in size and color precisely alike, be¬ 
ing a bluish white with spots of reddish 
brown so confluent as to appear almost 
uniformly of that color, the fifth is notably 
greater in size and very different in color¬ 
ation, having a more decided ground work 
with its spots much, larger and thinly scat¬ 
tered. Again while the four eggs were 
nearly fresh, this oddity contained a fully 
formed embryo which was with difficulty 
removed. N. A. Eddy, Bangor, Me. 
The Coloring Matter of Bird’s Eggs— 
The brilliant and remarkably permanent 
color of the eggs of many birds has led 
Liebermann to investigate its cause. He 
finds that however widely different these 
colors are from each other, they are due 
essentially to but two coloring matters, 
one a blue or green substance, probably a 
biliary coloring matter, the other character¬ 
ized by a remarkable absorptive spectrum. 
These coloring matters are contained in 
the first layer of the shell, often in several 
thicknesses. When the shell is treated with 
hydrochloric acid, the coloring separates in 
flakes, and by treatment with alcohol a 
strong solution may be obtained. With 
the eggs of Gulls and Plovers an unsuc¬ 
cessful attempt was made to obtain the 
coloring matter pure. Scientific American. 
