MArcH 17, 1906.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 

I could plainly see a gallinule, he asked me to 
shoot it for him, which I did, and found it to 
be in exceptionally fine feather. The Doctor 
reported to me a few days later that it was a 
female containing eggs, which he judged would 
not be fully developed for another ten days. 
As the Doctor and his friend were anxious 
to get home, we discontinued the search, and I 
did not again enter these ponds, but several 
weeks later the Doctor and another friend again 
visited the ponds and, on looking at the large 
nest I referred to above, they found the young 
had left and there remained only some pieces 
of shells and one unbroken egg, which the 
Doctor subsequently examined and found to 
contain the fully developed embryo of a gallinule. 
They found no new nests and this is the last 
search that I know of. 
During the past summer, 1905, every time I 
crossed the Hunters Point Avenue Bridge over 
the railroad tracks I saw one or more Florida 
gallinules feeding in plain sight in the ponds 
immediately to the north and east. Many times 
there would be a gang of a dozen or more 
chattering Italian laborers working on the tracks 
within fifteen or twenty feet of these birds, with 
nothing but a fringe of cattails intervening, and 
the birds would continue feeding as serenely as 
though they were miles away from any human 
beings. On several occasions I have seen brake- 
men on passing freight trains hurl chunks of 
coal and other missiles at them, and they would 
simply swim, or half fly and run to the nearest 
cattails, where they would skulk back and forth 
inside the edge, often scolding at the inter- 
ruption. 
In regard to the nesting of the American coot, 
these birds in their general appearance, habits, 
manner of building nests, size and coloring of 
eggs, etc, so closely resemble the Florida 
gallinule that at a glance it is difficult to dis- 
tinguish between them, and at the present 
moment I cannot state postively that they nest 
in these ponds, but I have shot several speci- 
mens here in the summer season and for years 
past have frequently observed others through- 
out the entire summer and well into the fall, so 
that I believe they nest here also. 
The coots used to frequent several ponds 
directly behind the Queens County Court 
House, where there is more open water and 
less cattails and reeds than in the others, but 
last spring a contractor left a number of beams 
and planks close by, which the boys of the 
neighborhood turned into rafts and for the 
entire summer they made things so lively around 
these ponds that the coots must have been 
driven away, for I did not see a single specimen 
where formerly we could see them almost daily. 
In conclusion I will state that since the breed- 
ing season last summer several of the ponds 
frequently by these birds have been filled in 
and are now used for railroad purposes, while 
many of the remaining ones will. undoubtedly 
be filled im or entirely wiped out this coming 
summer, for the much talked of tunnel of the 
Pennsylvania Railroad Co. will pass directly 
through them and they are now rapidly pushing 
the work on it. Else Ee 
Variation in the Habits of Birds. 
A GENERAL impression appears to prevail that 
the habits of any particular species of bird or 
other animal are permanent and peculiar to the 
species. This certainly is not the case in the 
Columbe, which change the habits according’ to 
the conditions in which they live. At the pres- 
ent time there are two species of the genus now 
existing in a wild state in London, namely, the 
birds descended from the wild blue rock dove 
(Columba livia), the undoubted origin of all the 
varieties of our domestic pigeon, with occasional 
specimens of the pure, unchanged bird which 
has escaped unharmed from the pigeon shooting 
matches. These birds now exist in great num- 
bers in a practically wild condition in London, 
nesting in all the large buildings, such as the 
British Museum, Courts of Justice, Houses of 
Parliament, etc., where, in many cases, they 
have become a somewhat serious nuisance; they 
have no owners, and their food is practically 
‘ 
supplied by the waste corn of the cab stands. 
They are, however, protected by the police and 
magistrates, the latter having repeatedly pun- 
ished persons capturing them. These birds also 
frequent the green grass spots which occur in 
the metropolis, and may be seen in such local- 
ities as the parks, Lincoln’s Inn Fields, Temple 
Gardens, etc., accompanied by a smaller number 
of specimens of the wild woodpigeon (Columba 
palumbus), which may be readily distinguished 
by its larger size and patch of creamy white on 
each side of the neck. 
The woodpigeon, or ring dove, is usually re- 
garded as one of the wildest of English birds, 
and numerous articles have appeared in the 
Field as to the best method of approaching it 
by sportsmen. At the present time it has be- 
come a resident in London, making its nests, 
which are always arboreal, in the trees of the 
various parks and squares, and may be seen 
feeding within a few yards of the observer—not, 
however, in the streets and among the cab ranks, 
like its congener, but on the grass plots that 
remain in the metropolis. This change in the 
420 
present time numbers of gulls are to be seen 
flying over the Thames in London. These are 
frequently fed by passengers on the bridges, 
and have now become so common as not to 
excite remark. This is a habit acquired in com- 
paratively recent years. In my youth the oc- 
currence of gulls in London was only a very 
rare incident, but finding a considerable quan- 
tity of food, they have become inland residents 
for a considerable part of the year, and their 
sleeping places must, of course, be well known 
to many waterside residents.——W. B. Tegetmeier, 
in London Field. 

Reeves’ Pheasant. 
WE have had much to say in the past about 
the desirability, from the point of view of the 
sportsman and the naturalist, of domesticating— 
at least so far as to rear them in confinement—the 
game birds of this continent and of foreign lands; 
and while not very much is published of the ex- 
periments that are going on in this direction, 
nevertheless these experiments are constantly 

REEVES PHEASANT. 
habits of these birds in this country is remark- 
able. In France, on the contrary, they have long 
been familiar, and in the old gardens of the 
Tuileries many may recollect the tame cushats 
that would come down and take food out of the 
hands of those persons who were in their con- 
fidence from their constant habit of feeding 
them. Even in the wild habits of the wood- 
pigeon changes seem to have occurred. Mac- 
gillivray, whose description of this bird is 
minute, does not allude to the large flocks 
which now occasionally come over from the 
Continent and do vast damage to the turnip 
crops of the farmer. But the most remarkable 
circumstance is from being very wild birds, they 
have become quite tame in the parks of Lon- 
don, not even choosing retired places for nest- 
ing, but building in the most conspicuous sit- 
uation, one illustration of which I may men- 
tion. In the tree by the roadside opposite Sir 
Walter Gilbey’s, in the Regent’s Park, within 
150 yards of Portland road railway station, and 
over a footpath along which hundreds of people 
pass daily, was a well-used nest, which existed 
for a couple of years, although it has since been 
deserted, the birds being apparently perfectly 
undisturbed by the busy traffic beneath them. _ 
Other birds have changed their habits within 
the memory of persons now living. At the 
being made, For example in last week’s issue of 
Forest AND STREAM there were advertised as for 
sale several pairs of Reeves’ pheasants, a splendid 
species referred to as long ago as the thirteenth 
century by the great traveler Marco Polo, who 
spoke of them as possessing “‘tayles of eyght, 9, 
and tenne spannes long’? and as being found in 
the “Kingdom of Erguyl or Arguill the W. side 
of Tartary.” The adult male has a tail six feet 
in length and is brilliant with a white hood, a 
black face, a broad ring of white around the neck 
and a back of black and gold. Reeves’ pheasants 
is a bird of northern Asia, and has been intro- 
duced in Britain, but is wild and shy, so much 
so that it has been spoken of as not a very de- 
sirable bird from the sportsman’s point of view. 
They breed wild in England and southern Scot- 
land, and the eminent artist, Mr. J. G. Millais, is 
most enthusiastic about its possibilities as a bird 
for sport.) Ele says: 
“There is no game bird, I think, in the world 
which, if introduced into suitable localities, would 
give greater pleasure to both the sportsman and 
the naturalist than this grand pheasant; for grand 
he certainly is, both to the eye as well as the 
object of aim to the expectant shooter. We all 
know, when a cock Reeves’ pheasant attains his 
full beauty and length of tail, what a splendid 
bird he is, as he struts about in his gorgeous trap- 
