Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 31.djvu/827

Rh expresses surprise that closely allied species of birds should oftentimes build divers kinds of nests, overlooking the fact that even closely allied varieties of man build entirely unlike houses.

Mr. F. H. Knowlton records a cliff-swallow appropriating, for the construction of its own nest, pellets of mud which were being brought by another swallow. Also the curious fact that a number of swallows were observed busily engaged in sealing up a nest in which one of their comrades lay dead. Among the curious traits of birds, Mr. H. B. Bailey communicates some new ones observed in the red-headed woodpecker by Mr. Agersborg, of Dakota Territory. This gentleman had observed one of these birds wedging grasshoppers in a large crack of an old oak-post. Nearly a hundred were stored away in this manner, the bird afterward feeding at leisure on the supply. This parallels the habit of the California woodpecker storing acorns in holes in the tree and subsequently feeding on the fully developed larvæ within the seed.

Mr. O. P. Hay, in a late number of "The Auk," has an interesting paper on the red-headed woodpecker as a hoarder, showing that the bird makes accumulations of beechnuts, pounding them between the shingles of a roof, wedging them into crevices, and storing them in cavities in trees.

The plausible suggestion made by Darwin as to the agency of aquatic birds in the wide dispersal of fresh-water mollusks, was singularly confirmed several years after by Mr. Arthur F. Gray shooting a duck which had clinging to one of its toes a fresh-water mussel. Dr. J. W. Fewkes has recently recorded the shooting of a duck in Sebec, Maine, which was in like manner transporting a fresh-water mussel. The same bird had been observed several days before with this curious companion clinging to its foot, and had the duck been migrating at the time it might have transported the mussel many hundreds of miles. In this connection it would be an interesting inquiry as to how far the similarity observed in north temperate and circumpolar animals is due to the annual migration of birds north and south.

Mr. William Brewster notes some interesting features in the habits of a young Kittiwake gull of the St. Lawrence. He brought home a young one, its mate having died of thirst, the other one surviving through the accidental discovery that the bird drank only salt-water! Both the birds obstinately refused to drink fresh water. Observations on this bird by Professor A. Hyatt showed how slowly and timidly it acquired the art of swimming and flying. The bird when first forced to fly was thrown into the air, and, to the surprise of Professor Hyatt, flew with great rapidity and precision, circling about the house and through the apple-trees, and, finally, flew near him several times in