852 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[May 29, 1909. 
left. The neighbors resented such behavior and 
pecked at the new arrival with their long sharp 
bills, but on he pressed amid much opposition 
and complaint until he reached his mate. They 
changed places and he took up his vigil on the 
egg. The mate, upon leaving the rookery, in¬ 
stead of taking flight from where she stood, 
went through the former proceeding, although 
in inverse order. The neighbors made vigorous 
protest and sped the parting sister with a fusil¬ 
lade* of blows, until she arrived at the edge of 
the ledge where she dropped off into space. 
Others were coming and going and kept up an 
interesting performance for the onlooker. 
Then we went down and scared all the birds 
from the ledge and watched them return. Al¬ 
most before we got back into position the first 
one pitched awkwardly in to the edge. She sat 
chuckling and craning her neck, then hobbled 
up the rock past two eggs, bowing and looking 
around. On she went in her straddling gait, 
stopping and cocking her head on one side till 
she passed eight or nine eggs. Finally she 
poked an egg .gently with her bill, looked it over 
and tucked it under her leg. By that time the 
ledge was full of birds, all cackling, pecking at 
each other and shuffling about looking among 
the eggs. It took almost half an hour for life 
in the colony to drop back to its normal stage. 
Two years later when we watched the same 
large rookery there was hardly an egg to be 
seen. Where it was a little noisy during the 
days of incubation, it was bedlam turned loose 
when the murres had young. We tried the same 
experiment of scaring the parents from the ledge 
and watched their return. The young kept up 
a constant squealing from the time-the old birds 
left, a noise that had the penetration of an equal 
number of young pigs that had just been gunny- 
sacked. When the first old hen returned to the 
edge she bowed elaborately and started calling 
in cries that sounded at times just like the bass 
voice of a man and varied all the way to the 
cackling of an old chicken. After sitting there 
for five minutes she straddled up a few steps 
and started in from the beginning again. Some 
of the young began waddling down to meet their 
parents, calling all the time in piercing screams. 
One crawled hurriedly down to go under the 
old murre’s wing, but she gave him a jab that 
knocked him clear off his feet and sent him 
looking for his real mother. She looked at two 
more that sat squealing, but passed them by and 
knocked another one sprawling out of her way. 
At last a chick came up that seemed to qualify, 
for she let him crawl under her wing. The 
same thing seemed to be going on in every part 
of the ledge. I did not see an old bird that 
accepted a chick until after calling and looking 
around for from five to twenty minutes. If the 
difference in size, shape and color helps the 
murre to recognize her own eggs, then the great 
variation in pitch, volume and tone of the voice 
surely helps her to know her own chick among 
so many others. William L. Finley. 
MOTHERS BE CAUTIOUS. 
In selecting a food for the baby don’t ex¬ 
periment. Baby can’t stand much experiment¬ 
ing. Borden’s Eagle Brand Condensed Milk 
is acted upon by the infant stomach substan¬ 
tially the same as mother’s milk. For 50 
years it has made glad mothers and started 
thousands of babies on life’s journey with 
health and happiness. — Adv. 
Birds in Bronx Park. 
New York, May 18.— Editor Forest and 
Stream: Do the bird lovers of this city know 
what a good hunting ground they have in Bronx 
Park— and so easy of access to most of us? To 
give some idea of what may be seen there I 
will tell what my experience was last Sunday 
morning. 
I left my house very early and arrived in the 
Bronx woods just east of the conservatory at 
about 4:30. I remained in the park about three 
hours and this is the result: The first birds 
I saw were robins and sparrows, but my first 
find was a scarlet tanager. He was close by 
the plantation. Later in the morning I heard 
one sing within ten feet of me. I continued 
up to a favorite haunt of mine just above the 
big cobble stone bridge and there I saw a num¬ 
ber of warblers, but the light was so bad and 
the trees so full of leaves that I could only dis¬ 
tinguish the black poll, Maryland yellow throat 
and the oven bird. Then I saw three Wilson’s 
snipe, saw and heard the woodthrush and veery 
and later a couple of crested flycatchers, the 
male calling up the police in the old Lorillard 
mansion. 
As I walked toward the southern exit of the 
park I saw the following birds, some in song: 
The brown thrasher, bluebirds, Baltimore orioles, 
phoebe, flicker, grackle, crows, various sparrows 
and a kingfisher. And the last bird I saw as 
I left the park was the cuckoo. He flew over 
my head, but I was unable to see whether he 
had a yellow or black bill. 
I consider this a pretty good showing for a 
couple of hours’ work of a morning, and I would 
have had even better luck had the weather been 
bright and pleasant, but it threatened rain all 
the time I was out. Anyone can do this same 
or better any morning in season and then there 
is always the chance of hearing two of our best 
musicians—the woodthrush and the veery, both 
of whom I believe nest here, for I find them 
very often, the latter more common than the 
former. Another nesting bird here is the oven 
bird. 
I have often wondered why in this rich field 
I never meet anyone interested in birds. Can 
it be that they do not know that the majority 
of our Eastern birds can be found here in their 
respective seasons and a number spend the year 
with us here? Charles H. Gianini. 
A Killer Whale from New Jersey. 
The killer whale, while occurring with some 
frequency in the North Atlantic, is rarely 
stranded on the coast, and so far as known no 
specimens from these shores have hitherto been 
preserved in any museum. In a recent number 
of Science, however. Dr. F. W. True, of Wash¬ 
ington, records the securing by the National 
Museum of the skull and other parts of the 
skeleton of a killer which was stranded in 
Barnegat Bay in January, 1909. The specimen 
was reported to be about thirty feet long and 
the skull shows it to be an old individual. Two 
killers -were stranded at Eastport, Maine, in 1902 
and were reported by Dr. True and another was 
obtained at Portland, Maine, in 1904. 
Though scarcely known to the multitudes of 
people who inhabit the Atlantic coast, killers 
are abundant and well known to the primitive 
peoples inhabiting the coasts of Northwestern 
America, and in the mythology of the coast 
Indians of British Columbia and Alaska the 
killer holds a prominent place. 
Killers take their names from their destruc¬ 
tive habits. They subsist on fish, seals, por¬ 
poises and whales and are said to destroy far 
more than they can eat, killing for love of 
slaughter. According to Captain Scammon, 
whose volume on the marine mammalia is full 
of interesting facts, three or four of these ani¬ 
mals, not more than fifteen or twenty feet in 
length, sometimes attack the largest whales, 
which seem hopeless of escape and hardly try 
to get away. The killers cluster around the 
victim’s head, bite off its lips, drag it below the 
water and often eat out its tongue. They have 
been known to seize upon a whale that had 
been killed by the whalers and finally to rob 
the men of it, heedless of blows from spades 
and lances. They are said to destroy many 
seals, and may even follow them in their migra¬ 
tions. Even the walrus is said to fear the killer, 
though as Captain Scammon has said, it may 
very well be that the fear felt by the walrus 
is chiefly on account of the young. It is said 
that killers working in a school of dolphins or 
porpoises swallow them alive, and that they have 
been seen to lift the head above the water, hold¬ 
ing in the jaws a seal which they shake and 
crush before swallowing it. On the borders of 
the Arctic Ocean the white whale is a favorite 
food. 
Women’s Hats Save Levees. 
“Women's hats are doing much to save the 
levees along the Mississippi River in Louisiana,’’ 
said Henry R. Lewis; in the Plankinton. “This 
statement sounds fantastic, but of the fashion¬ 
able fur hats it is certainly true. Muskrats, 
which for 3'ears have cost the State no end of 
trouble and thousands of dollars through their 
depredations in the levees, are now most eagerly 
sought by the millinery trade throughout the 
country, and hunters in Louisiana are hunting 
them in lieu of other game. For years the musk¬ 
rats have burrowed in the levees, and in nearly 
every case where there has been a crevasse along 
the river front the cause was traced to a musk¬ 
rat hole. The State has tried several means to 
get rid of the pests, but without success. Dur¬ 
ing the winter the millinery stores in New Or¬ 
leans bought several hundred muskrat furs from 
hunters in the different parishes and placed them 
on turbans, which now so resemble a cat curled 
up on milady’s coiffure. Ever since then rats 
have been popular upon as well as in the pom¬ 
padour of ‘Psyche.’ Several of the more pro¬ 
gressive hunters quickly realized that muskrats 
were marketable and gave up the pursuit of 
ducks and other game. One hunter alone in 
February killed 6,000 rats, for which he received 
twenty cents apiece. Other hunters have fol¬ 
lowed the lead of this mighty nimrod, and it 
begins to look as if the State will soon rid it¬ 
self of the industrious rodents whose burrow- 
ings have for many years endangered the cities 
and towns along Louisiana’s river front.”— 
Milwaukee Sentinel. 
The Forest and Stream may be obtained from 
any nezvsdcaler on order. Ask your dealer to 
supply you regularly. 
