April 1st was fine and warm and the ice moved out of the Pembina River. In the afternoon I saddled my horse and tied my collecting outfit on my saddle and with my camera in its case on my back started out to take the nest of the two owls. As the last nest found was the easiest to obtain a picture of, I took it first. The bird sitting on this nest was the largest of the pair and probably the female was, with the exception of one Goshawk, the most warlike of any I have had to deal with.

As I climbed the stub she charged and knocked my heavy Stetson hat off and struck me several times on top the head and quite hard. Once she put her claws through my shirt and scratched the skin. I had to watch her continually and wave her off when she charged, always straight at my head, as I was cutting out the side of the stub to get a picture of the nest and eggs. The mate appeared on the scene soon after I commenced work, but did not attack like the other. Both birds remained close by while I was there protesting with cries of rike, rike, rike, rike and occasional whir-u, whir-u, while flying. After I had erected a tripod and obtained a picture of the nest, I placed the eggs in my collecting box and both birds returned to the nest and examined it. They were still there when I left to go to the other nest. The seven eggs were slightly incubated and were in the hollow top of a dead tamarac or spruce stub as shown in the picture. The nest was about ten feet from the ground and hollow about ten inches deep. The eggs rested in a hollow in the crumbled rotten wood at the bottom of the hole. There was no nesting material but this rotten wood and a few feathers.

After packing up my things, I rode to the other nest which was in exact

ly a similar position in the broken top of a tamarac or spruce stub about eighteen feet from the ground and the cavity about six inches deep. The eggs rested on a crumbled, rotten wood and a few feathers exactly as in the first nest. There was an old Flicker's nest immediately below so the birds apparently preferred the hollow in the broken top as a nesting site. This stub was so rotten and shaky I could not climb it and had to erect another tripod to secure the six fresh white eggs. This bird was not at all pugnacious, only uttering cries of protest like the other. As soon as I descended it returned and examined the nest and sat in it for about a minute and then left.

On April 4th, I had heard a Hawk whistling in a muskeg about four miles from the other nests and on the sixth I went to look for the nest. After walking some distance along the edge of the muskeg, looking at all likely stubs I saw a Hawk Owl sitting on a dead tree not far off, and started over to investigate. Coming to a wet place I threw a pole across to walk on and the noise started an owl from the stub. This nest was about twelve feet from the ground and down about a foot in the hollow spruce stub. It is very difficult to tell the stubs apart without an ax to cut into them. The seven eggs could be seen through an old Flicker's hole almost on a level with them. They rested on a few rotten chips and feathers and lay on top of dry moss and grasses with which the old Flicker's nest had been filled up, likely by a squirrel. The eggs also were fresh and it would seem that the first week in April is about the time to secure fresh sets of eggs in this vicinity. Both birds re mained about close while I was taking the nest but were not fighters like the one at the first nest taken. While I

was packing the eggs, one of the birds returned to the nest, and climbed down, head first, ad remained sitting in for about a minute and then left. The other bird came and had a look but did not enter.

This ended my first successful season with the American Hawk Owl and I have not been out for their nest since those enjoyable days but hope to renew their acquaintance in the season of 1919.

A. S. Henderson, Belvidere, Alberta, Canada.

The Bartramian Sandpiper

By H. H. Johnson, Pittsfield, Maine It is with a degree of sadness we view the annual departure each year of the autumnal migration of our bird friends. We make a close acquaintance each summer of some family, likely a different one each year. We have watched their daily life. Noted the loving courtship, the interest taken by both in the erecting or building of the new home. The care and anxiety of the mother in the laying of the eggs and rearing the young.

In the last proud father must do a share, yet it is upon the solitious mother that house-keeping cares hang heavy. We have viewed all this, even taken a clumsy hand at feeding perhaps, being soundly lectured meanwhile by anxious parents, who rather resented our interference with the proper way to bring up a child.

Much greater is the loss then, when one of these bird friends go to return no more. When as a boy on my father's farm, each returning spring there came (to spend the summer on the farm) the Bartramian Sandpiper or as we called it, the Plover. I well remember that mellow whistle and uplifted wings of the alighting Plover, the top rail of the pasture fence being the perch most favored. Bartramian Sandpipers differ most completely from the generality of its relatives. It is a Sandpiper which does not frequent marshes, which breeds habitually on the dry uplands and often perches among the branches of trees. Coues describes the call as a "longdrawn, soft, mellow whistle, of a peculiarly clear, resonant quality." This prolonged whistle of the alighting bird together with its habit of holding its wings for a moment perpendicularly, before adjusting them over its back, makes it particularly noticeable. While common they were never plentiful, one or two pairs at most being the number in our immediate neighborhood. To the south and a mile away there being another pair; three miles to the east and near the village of Pittsfield there were two more pairs. While there may have been others those were the only ones I ever remember nesting in this section. So you see "common" is really an extreme way of expressing it and were it not for their open field habits (rare) would be the word. They reared a brood each year and were

never gunned on our farm. I had the good fortune to find their nest thus early in my youth. It was in a pasture then clear of all bushes. Some years it was used as a field and the hay was cut on it. The nest was situated at the side of and somewhat covered by a bunch of grass or tussock as it is called, and contained four eggs. The bird was flushed from the nest which was a slight hollow lined with a few straws of grass. I did not disturb them. A clerk in one of the stores at the village heard of my find and tried to buy them, but I would not sell. This was the first week of June. One year while following my father about the field as he cut the grass with a mowing machine, a flock of Plover were run on to and before the mower could be stopped, the head of the mother was decapitated as she sought to defend her young from the wherring knives of the machine. A number of years later, in 1894, a boy friend brought me a set of four eggs he had collected. This was May 19th. He describes the nest as a slight hollow lined with a little grass, bird on nest and the eggs were fresh. This set was from one of the pairs which nested near the village. These Plover reared a brood each year up to 1898, but being near to town were much hunted each year in August, the law being off then and the shooting of Upland Plover allowed. These, therefore were much wilder than those on the home place, which were protected.

Now not only these have disappeared, probably shot, but those on the home farm as well, who were not persecuted while there at least. I have not heard or observed a Bartramian Sandpiper in this section for years. As early as 1888 John C. Cahoon writing for the Ornithologist and Oologist of the "Shore Birds of Cape Cod" says of Bartramian Sandpiper "it was in for

mer years abundant on the Cape during migrations," implying a scarcity at that time. Of its habits he says: "It is rarely if ever seen on the beaches or flats, but occasionally goes on to the dry salt marshes to feed on the crickets and grasshoppers that are very numerous there in summer and autumn." Knight in Birds of Maine, 1908, says of the Bartramian Sandpiper: "This species formerly occurred commonly during migrations and was not rare as a summer resident of various portions of the state, it is now decidedly less common and the number of breeding birds which occur in the state are very few." Several years ago there appeared a newspaper writeup in a Bangor daily of the finding of the nest and eggs by a Bangor taxidermist, Cyrus S. Winch and in which John L. Childs of New York figured. This is the last notice of the breeding of the Bartramian Sandpiper in the state that has come to my knowledge. There is no doubt of the economic value of the "Plover" as the food consists almost entirely of grasshoppers and crickets in the N. S. Goss in History of the

season.

Birds of Kansas, 1891, says of the Bartramian Sandpiper: "These birds should be strictly protected, for they are beneficial and in no way harmful."

The eggs measure 1.70 x 1.28, are commonly four in number rarely five. W. B. Crispin reported finding a set of five, (see Oologist Sept. 1912. The eggs, the general shape which is that of the Spotted Sandpiper, are pale buff, a shade richer in color than the Spotted Sandpiper, spotted thinly on smaller end, spots increasing in density and size toward the larger end, with umber brown, with an under spot ting of a purplish gray; differing from the Spotted Sandpiper, the spots which are much darker and lack the rich shade of the Bartramian Sandpiper.