Page:Condor13(4).djvu/10

 124 THE CONDOR Vol. XIII the musk-rats had been adding to the'house, with the result that the mother bird, in order to keep her treasures from being buried, had been forced to move her nest over toward the edge of the pile. In fact four of the eggs were missing on this date, and we surmised that they had been pushed of[ into the water during the moving process. A .week later (May 31) the house had been built up much higher, and the nest was on the ragged edge of the pile with the eggs apparently far ad- vanced in incubation. On June 8 the eggs had been hatched, and in our examina- tion of the nest we were surprised to find the four missing eggs deeply buried in the debris at almost the exact spot where the nest was located when first found. A fascinating bit of the family history would have undoubtedly been revealed had we been enabled to observe the attitude of the busy musk-rats toward the brooding mother bird, and the process of moving the nest. The second nest was found June 13, 1908, over a month later in the spring than the first nest was found. Some slight experience with nesting Mallards in Nevada had taught me to look in high and dry locations for their nests and I was therefore greatly surprised to have a female Mallard flush from almost beneath my feet while crossing a low swale. The nest was built in rather a dense growth of dead cat-tails, tender green shoots and scattered young willows on ground formerly aimpy, but at that time almost dry. It was a beautifully built basket-like struc- tte of dried 6at-tail blades with very little of the usual down in the lining, and re- markably well concealed. We passed within three feet of the brooding femile at least twice before she flushed. During the following week the district was visited by a heavy hailstorm and on our next visit we found that the marsh had filled with water and that the nest had been drowned out and deserted. BLUE-WINGED TEAL (Querquedula discors) By far the most abundant nesting duck throughout the Barr district was the pretty little Blue-winged Teal. No matter what type of ground our searches arried us over, we were sure to be starfled by the occasional flutter of wings, as a dainty little gray-clad mother left her nest like a flash upon our too close approach. We found nests of these birds in the dense cat-tail growth along sloughs, on the soggy,spongy seepage ground under the big dykes, at the edge of beaten paths near the lake-shore, by roadsides back from the water, among the dry weeds and sand of the prairie, far from the water's edge, amid the dense rank grass on a tiny island, in alfalfa fields, on grassy flats, and in cavities in and upon musk-rat houses. The nests exhibited a wide diversity in construction. The predominating type was a neat basket-like structure composed of fine soft dead grass, sometimes set well into a dense clump of rank grass on the surface of the ground, and sometimes sunken into a cavity until the top of the nest was flush with the surface of the ground. These nests were usually liberally lined vith down; much thicker on the sides and rim of the nest than on the bottom. In fact several were examined which had no down whatever underneath the eggs. The quantity of down varied greatly in different nests, but apparently increased in quantity as incubation ad- vanced. A less common type of nest was made entirely of bits of dead cat-tail blades deep- set into a cavity in the ground. This type of nest was usually found in marshy places, where this material was more available, and in these there was much less of the downy lining. The concealment of these nests was likewise less effective, and taken as a whole this type of nest was altogether inferior. We found a few built in wet places where the foundation of the nest was actually wet, but we did