Of the nesting of the Catbird he tells us that “ordinarily a week or ten days are spent in making a choice of locality.”
With the Orchard Oriole “Mating does not occur,” he says, till “more than two weeks after the advent of the sexes.... The sexes having come together in a wise and business-like way, with little or none of the bluster that is customary on such occasions, a conference ensues, which results in a temporary separation for mutual good; one bird going in one direction and the other in an entirely opposite course. The selection of a suitable spot for a home is the vera causa of this divergence.... In five or six days from the time of the assumption of matrimonial relations the nest is started, and through the united efforts of both birds for the period of a week is brought to completion.”
Of the Hummingbird he writes, “The sexes, tired as it were, of the riotous and luxurious lives they have been leading, come together by mutual agreement, and enter into matrimonial relations. This being accomplished, they separate for a brief period, and each proceeds to scour the country for miles around in quest of a suitable tree in which to locate. When one is selected by either bird the other is summoned to the spot to talk over, in true bird language, the merits thereof. Should the parties differ as to the advantageousness of the site, no quarrelling or bickering is indulged in, but, in the most friendly manner, they separate and renew the search until one is found which gives satisfaction.”
In his biography of the Chewink occurs the following: “The females wholly entranced, yield to the persuasions of their would-be lords, and conjugal relations are entered into.... But the happy couple are not yet ready to begin nest-building. They must needs celebrate the occasion of their marriage. Accordingly they set out on a wedding trip, so to speak, visiting adjoining lots and thickets, and enjoying the delights and scenes around them. This continues for four or five days, when the lovers, thoroughly surfeited, return and quietly settle down to prosy life.”
Such statements as the foregoing cast a shadow of suspicion upon remarks that otherwise might be regarded as authentic, and attach to the work the stigma of untrustworthiness.
The account of the nocturnal habits of the Virginia Rail, although the wording is changed, savors strongly of the latter part of the 537th page of Coues’s “Birds of the Northwest.”
Enough has been said to show that instead of becoming an authority, worthy of place amongst the standard works on North American ornithology, Mr. Gentry’s book on nests and eggs must inevitably find its level alongside such unreliable and worthless productions as Jasper’s “Birds of North America” and similar trash. In other words, instead of a work of scientific value, we have a popular picture-book, well-adapted for the amusement of children.—C. H. M.
General Notes.
Dendrœca palmarum at Sing Sing, New York.—On April 29, 1882, while collecting at this place, I killed a specimen of the true D. palmarum. The bird is unusually yellow beneath, but Mr. Robert Ridgway, who kindly compared it, says: “We have several specimens from Wisconsin and Illinois which will match it.” It was busily engaged, when captured, in catching winged insects in a low swampy thicket.—A. K. Fisher, M. D., Sing Sing, N. Y.
Nest and Eggs of Setophaga picta—a Correction.—Mr. W. E. Bryant has kindly called my attention to the fact that he described two nests and sets of eggs of the Painted Redstart in Vol. VI of this Bulletin (pp. 176, 177). The clutch found by Mr. Stephens and mentioned by me in the last number of the Bulletin (Vol. VII, July 1882, pp. 140, 141) is, therefore, the third, instead of the first authentic one known. I take this opportunity for correcting the mistake, and at the same time tender my apology to Mr. Bryant for the inadvertent oversight of his note.—William Brewster, Cambridge, Mass.