May 30, 1908.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
851 
Bird Collections in the South. 
Raleigh, N. C., May 19 .— Editor forest and 
Stream: A tour of the State is being made by 
Secretary Gilbert Pearson, of the Audubon So¬ 
ciety, and Clement Brimley, an ornithologist of 
Raleigh. They will visit many of the middle and 
mountain counties in search of rare birds, and 
in connection with Herbert Brimley will pre¬ 
pare a book upon those of North Carolina. It 
is strange, but true, that most of the informa¬ 
tion regarding North Carolina birds has come 
from Mr. Clement Brimley, who is English by 
birth, but who has spent almost all his life here. 
His brother, Mr. Herbert Brimley, is now on 
a short tour with Mr. Frank Green and an artist. 
Mr. Green has spent a week here and has been 
doing some painting in the State Museum, mak¬ 
ing a background for an immense case in which 
the ducks of the State are shown. The scene 
represents dawn, at a point on one of the great 
sounds, and there is very spirited movement of 
ducks in the air and on the water. The variety 
of ducks to be shown is very great. Herbert 
Brimley and Mr. Green are at the large lakes 
not far from Newport. In one of these lakes 
the cormorants breed, it being their most north¬ 
erly breeding place on this continent. One of 
the pictures which Mr. Green has painted is for 
a background for the case in which the cor¬ 
morants are shown, together with their nests, 
eggs, young, etc. The cormorants have rather 
odd habits. Last year and this year they were 
not at this particular breeding place, but at an¬ 
other part of the lake. Mr. Brimley found two 
years ago that they were greatly troubled by 
the crows which ranged in the woods on the 
edge of the lake, and which, when the cormo¬ 
rants leave their nests, go to the latter and rob 
them. He saw crows flying away with eggs 
impaled upon their bills. The young cormo¬ 
rants have a special enemy in the shape of alli¬ 
gators, which are very numerous in these lakes. 
Mr. Brimley tells me that once, while he was 
watching an alligator, he standing motionless in 
the lake, rifle in hand, he saw a young cormo¬ 
rant swimming. It must have fallen from a 
nest. The alligator took a sight at the bird, sank 
himself out of sight, then rose without making 
a ripple, took another sight, and when he re¬ 
appeared took in the bird with a double snap 
of his jaws. 
In June Herbert Brimley and Secretary Pear¬ 
son will go to several points along the coast to 
see the rookeries of the shore birds and to ob¬ 
tain material for the book on North Carolina 
birds referred to, which will be published per¬ 
haps some time next year and which will be 
profusely illustrated. The first place they will 
visit will be Orton, a great rice plantation on 
the Cape Fear River, below Wilmington, where 
they will examine a breeding place of the white 
cranes which has been used for centuries by 
these birds, nearby being several eagles’ nests 
in the tops of huge cypresses. They will go up 
the coast and visit various breeding places in 
the sounds, continuing to the Virginia line, and 
they will also see the rookeries immediately upon 
the sea beach. 
The work of collecting specimens of birds for 
the State museum has progressed very well, Mr. 
Thomas Addickes applying himself to this. The 
nests and eggs are to be illustrated and the 
plant is to have a perfect specimen of every bird 
and its nest in the State. The writer had the pleas¬ 
ure of spending an afternoon with Mr. Addickes 
in field work and we made a very interesting 
find. We were going along on the edge of a 
bluff above a stream when suddenly we saw a 
mother screech owl and three of her bantlings. 
The latter were well able to fly. AH four sat 
on the limbs of a distorted water oak. The 
mother bird allowed us almost to place a hand 
upon her and then flew away with a series of 
calls to her young. Only one followed her. An¬ 
other was taken on the perch and the other flew 
twice and it was taken. These birds were about 
two-thirds grown and were gray. They were 
very active with beak and claw and kept up an 
incessant popping of beaks and wild rolling of 
eyes, looking very like a negro in a state of fright. 
We found the woods literally full of birds, 
over thirty varieties being noted in three hours’ 
time, including the oriole and song thrush. It 
is a subject of general remark in the State that 
bird protection has brought the birds to great 
numbers not only around Raleigh, but almost 
everywhere. This does not apply to the high 
mountains, where birds are much less abundant 
than elsewhere. The robbing of birds’ nests 
has to a great extent decreased. This is be¬ 
cause country boys are scattered and there is 
no rivalry as collectors. The State has a very 
complete collection of eggs of birds, but is only 
beginning that of the nests. Striking examples 
of the latter, so far as the larger birds are con¬ 
cerned, are those of the cormorant and the water 
turkey, a bird which does not ..belong here, but 
which breeds in the lake at Orton and perhaps 
in one or two other points. 
The work of preparing the fauna of the State 
in the museum is now much more complete than 
ever before and a great deal of attention has 
been given to another department in which the 
fish are shown. Curator Brimley was advised 
on the 18th of May of the capture at Cape Look¬ 
out of a large whale which was towed to Beau¬ 
fort and put on view there for two or three 
days, and which the whaling crew then cut up 
in order to get the oil and bone. It was over 
fifty feet long and twenty-five feet in girth. It 
has been several years since a whale had been 
captured at that point. In the museum there 
is a very fine skeleton of one taken there in 
1874, which was fifty feet in length. 
Fred. A. Olds. 
Grouse Scarcity. 
Wymore, Neb., May 16 .—Editor forest and 
Stream: I have been interested in the articles 
in Forest and Stream in regard to the grouse 
scarcity in the East, and as the crop was very 
short in the West, I think I can suggest some 
reasons for it that may be interesting, at least 
as to the sharptail grouse and prairie chicken. 
I had occasion to be in the sandhill country 
in northwest Nebraska during part of May, 1907, 
and very early in the month I found the grouse 
were laying, and that few, if any, had com¬ 
menced to set. On the 14th of May we had a 
very unusual and hard freeze, which no doubt, 
destroyed all eggs laid up to that time upon 
which the hen had not commenced to set. Again 
on May 26—possibly it was the 24th—another 
very hard freeze destroyed all eggs laid up to 
that time. This would account for the fact that 
during the haying season in August and Sep¬ 
tember, many broods could be seen every day 
with only two or three chicks in the brood, and 
no doubt many hens raised no chicks at all. But 
from the fact that I found many half grown 
birds in October when hunting, I conclude that 
many liens which failed to get a brood from the 
first setting nested again and raised a late brood, 
which were generally small in number. 
1 he grouse and prairie chicken both nest on 
the ground, and while the nests are usually very 
well protected from casual observation, they are 
not so protected as to prevent the freezing of 
the eggs in weather that will freeze ice where 
the hen has not commenced setting. 
Another fact that 1 noticed last fall while 
hunting in Cherry county was that the propor¬ 
tion of prairie chickens to grouse was unusually 
large, and this may be accounted for by the fact 
that the chickens begin to lay earlier in the sea¬ 
son than the sharptail grouse, and the prairie 
chicken was no doubt setting at the time of 
these two cold snaps, and thus protecting their 
eggs, if the chicks had not already been hatched 
I he sharptail grouse is more of a Northern 
bird than the prairie chicken ; that is, its habitat 
lies north of that of the prairie chicken. I have 
never seen a sharptail grouse as far south as 
the Kansas-Nebraska State line, and it is only 
in the last five or six years that I have found 
prairie chickens among the grouse of the sand¬ 
hills, and in the last two years I have found 
birds in the sandhills that were a cross between 
the sharptail grouse and the prairie chicken. 
These cross birds are very pretty, are partly 
barred, like the chicken, and partly spotted like 
the grouse; in color are lighter than the chicken 
and darker than the grouse, but feathered on 
the legs, and feet much like the grouse. 
A. D. McCandless. 
Starlings in Australia. 
The Leader, of Melbourne, Australia, says 
the common starling, called Sturnus vulgaris by 
scientists, and still more uncomplimentary names 
by orchardists, is again making its presence fell 
and its absence desired in many parts of Vic¬ 
toria. The view taken by the Government Ento¬ 
mologist is that any good that starlings confer 
on agriculturists in general is much more than 
counterbalanced by the direct damage they cause 
to fruit crops. At Morington recently Mr. 
French noticed that they were very destructive 
among apples, and, like other consumers, dis¬ 
played a marked preference for Jonathans. Par- 
rakeets are noted for their habit of picking at 
fruit and destroying'much more than they eat, 
but some samples of apples taken after the star¬ 
lings had done with them comprised little more 
than the peel. Starlings will eat almost any 
kind of fruit, and have a fondness for tomatoes. 
Orchardists would certainly like to see them ex¬ 
terminated. 
A Pakenham fruit grower, writing to The 
Leader, says: “They are in this district in 
myriads, and are playing sad havoc with the 
apple crop. We are at our wits’ end to know 
what to do. As soon as the fruit shows any 
sign of ripening they begin to devour it. They 
move about in flocks, and can be numbered by 
the thousand. I have two men going with guns, 
but in a big orchard like this the birds are able 
to beat us. Judging by the aspect it looks as 
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