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Did You Know? 
By T. E. MUSSELMAN, Sc. D. 
I AM GIVING YOU a dozen trite statements dealing with curious bird experi- 
ences which have come to my attention in the last several years. Some of 
them doubtless will create questions, but after all in every case two or three 
persons can verify the irregular or peculiar statements. Did you know: 
1. That a tiny brown creeper, while gleaning its meal of insect eggs 
from the tree bark, occasionally disturbs tiny moths and has been known to 
follow them into the air, “hawking them” with great skill. 
2. That in the Northland, the first full complement of bluebird eggs 
contains four, five or six eggs (not three) and the second complement has 
three, four or five eggs (not six). 
3. That numerous writers tell of the breaking of brittle nesting sticks 
from trees by chimney swifts, but has anyone recorded whether these sticks 
are carried to the chimney in the bill or by the feet, nor have they explained 
how the bird applies her glutinous saliva to the tiny sticks. 
4. That bluebirds have full complements of eggs by the first week in 
April and about every four or five years a late freeze kills thousands of 
eggs. That after two weeks a different female takes over the nest box and 
builds a scanty grass nest above, through which the original complement 
may often be seen, and the new eggs occasionally rest on the rounded sides 
of the eggs below. 
5. That in Iowa an interested woman scientist had built a wooden tower 
or chimney with a circular exterior stairway leading to peep holes to aid her 
in studying the life activities of the swifts that nested within. 
6. That a prothonotary warbler is probably the most erratic of all birds 
in the selection of its nest sites. At a public dance pavilion north of the 
Florence bridge over the Illinois River, a female built her nest in a Chinese 
lantern which decorated a light in the dance hall, and in spite of noise, 
lights, and confusion, she brought off a family of babies successfully. 
7. That house wrens occasionally build nests largely of metal. A banded 
wren built her nest employing no sticks, but used broken strands of rusty 
chicken wire. Only the egg cavity contained horse hair and feathers. (The 
nest was presented. to the University of Illinois Museum by Miss Jessie 
Brackensiek.) That the following year the same banded female moved to 
a farm a mile east and helped herself generously to the farmer’s shingle 
nails and constructed her nest similarly from these rusty nails and some 
small pieces of wire, again padding the nest cup with hair and feathers. 
8. That normally most bluebirds have young upon the arrival of the 
house wrens, so the piercing of eggs is negative or limited; but on years 
when freezing weather destroys the first complement, it advances incubation 
two weeks and thus throws the bluebirds into direct competition with the 
wrens, with a corresponding increase in the destruction of eggs by piercing. 
9. That prairie horned larks often line the heel print of a person’s shoe 
with grass and use the impression as a nest. She is one of our earliest 
