Bulletin of the Nuttall Ornithological Club, 1–3. köide

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Nuttall Ornithological Club., 1876
 

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Page 110 - It is pleasant to watch the establishment and progress of a colony of these birds. Suddenly they appear— quite animated and enthusiastic, but undecided as yet; an impromptu debating society on the fly, with a good deal of sawing the air to accomplish, before final resolutions are passed. The plot thickens; some Swallows are seen clinging to the slightest inequalities beneath the eaves, others are couriers to and from the nearest mud-puddle; others again alight like feathers by the water's side,...
Page 42 - ... carices. The male scratches a shallow depression in the soft earth, which is usually lined with a thin layer of fragments of old grass blades, upon which the eggs, numbering from three to four, are deposited about the last of May or first of June. Owing to the low situations in which the nests are placed, the first set of eggs is often destroyed by a heavy fall of rain, causing the water to rise so as to submerge the nest. In this cas,e, the second set, numbering two or three, are often deposited...
Page 57 - For three miles together, the pigeons nests were so thick, that five hundred might have been told on the beech trees at one time; and could they have been counted on the hemlocks, as well, I doubt not but five thousand, at one turn round.
Page 59 - A Remedy for the Toothach. Their beaks excell for the toothach ; picking the gums therewith till they bleed. The Wobble? The wobble, an ill-shaped fowl ; having no long feathers in their pinions, which is the reason they cannot fly ; not much unlike the pengwin. They are in the spring very fat, or rather oyly ; but pull'd and garbidg'd, and laid to the fire to roast, they yield not one drop.
Page 56 - England, feede them how you can. I had a Salvage who hath taken out his boy in a morning, and they have brought home their loades about noone. I have asked them what number they found in the woods, who have answered Neent Metawna, which is a thousand that day ; the plenty of them is such in those parts. They are easily killed at rooste, because the one being killed, the other sit fast neverthelesse, and this is no bad commodity.
Page 60 - ... then any down bed that I have lyen on : and is there a very good commodity, the fethers of the Geese that I have killed in a short time, have paid for all the powther and shott, I have spent in a yeare...
Page 72 - Catalogue of the Birds of New England, with brief notes indicating the manner and character of their presence; with a list of species included in previous catalogues believed to have been wrongly classed as Birds of New England.
Page 72 - ... Connecticut" (pp. 25 and 29), rectifies an error in the recent descriptions of the females of this species. I wish to add my testimony to his conclusions, "that the female bird, like the male, is several years — at least three — in attaining its full plumage; and that the two sexes, when fully adult, can only be distinguished by the fact that, in the female, the throat, though strongly tinged with black, is never pure black as in the male." Long ago I discovered these facts, as the bird is...
Page 26 - Wallace believes, with very few exceptions, to hold good is, "that when both sexes are of strikingly gay and conspicuous colours, the nest is ... such as to conceal the sitting bird; while, whenever there is a striking contrast of colours, the male being gay and conspicuous, the female dull and obscure, the nest is open and the sitting bird exposed to view.
Page 58 - Swanite, because shee is the biggest of all the fowles of that Country. There are of them in Merrimack River, and in other parts of the country, greate store at the seasons of the yeare.

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