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MAR., I902. I THE CONDOR 31 up dripping with the spray. He re- peated this five times in about as many minutes stopping between to shake and preen his feathers. A bird who does everything in such a large way can hardly be expected to bring his mind to commonplace detail, and the nest of the scissor-tail certainly looks as if made on a generalization. It is usually big, with long streamers dang- ling from it in the breeze and looks as if the materials had been thrown at it-- in passing. One nest we found at Rio Coloral, however, was a marked excep- tion to all the others we saw, being small, compact, and neatly built. It had a large admixture of wool, left by the goats on the barbed wire fences. Wherever you find him the scissor- tail is so much in evidence that, like a barking coyote, one is as good as a flock, really abound. Near Corpus Christi we but in parts of the mesquite prairies of southern Texas the beautiful birds once counted thirteen in sight down the road. The largest number we ever found together, however, was in the San Ignatius oak mott, a grove of oaks halfway between Corpus Christi and Brownsville. In that section the low shin oaks of the sand prairie affords no good roosting places and the birds of various kinds congregate at night in the few oasis-like oak groves. The night we got to the San Ignatius mott we were too much occupied making camp before dark to notice much but a general noisy assembly of grackles and scissor-tails and the presence of a Pyro- cephalus, the red of whose breast we could just discern in the twilight; but at sundown, when Mr. Bailey shot a rattlesnake at the foot of a big oak in camp the report was followed by a roar and rattle in the top of the tree and a great flock of scissor-taiN arose and dis- persed in the darkness. They did not all leave the tree, apparently, even then, although some of them may have returned to it, for when daylight came to my surprise a large number of them straggled out of the tree. How one oak top could hold so many birds seemed a mystery. Before the flycatchers dis- persed for the day the sky around the mort was alive with them careering around in their usual acrobatic manner making the air vibrate with their shrill screams. Some Experiences of I9ox. P, M. SILLOWAY? h BRIGHTmorning, May 28, saw me early afield in quest of eggs of the long billed curlew, (JVumetdtts lo?,?irostris). A dry pond on the prai- rie about two miles from my home ap- peared to be the center of operations of a colony of these curlews, and I started out in high hope of adding a number of sets of Numeuius to my collection. By way of introduction I should say that my experience with Numenius in the preceding season had so elated me that I felt capable of finding any nest of this species which might chance to be n the prairie. On this particular morn- ing, therefore, I am armed with a capac- ious basket andsundry other receptacles LEWISTON, MONT. (cigar-boxes), and was anticipating a red-letter day in my oological career; in fact, I was already formulating an ex- change notice, announcing to my needy ornithological friends that I was over- stocked with eggs of the long-billed cur- lew and that I would take any old thing in exchange for them. The pond mentioned was near the corner of four extensive pastures, so that I had ample field for the exercise of my powers as a finder of curlews' nests. Approaching the pond from the south, according to a system I had ar- ranged, I was not surprised to see a curlew flying out to meet me, cackling his disapproval. Now, anyone who has