Life histories of North American shore birds, Part 1 (of 2)Bent, Arthur Cleveland
Science
Life histories of North American shore birds, Part 1 (of 2)
Bent, Arthur Cleveland
Birds -- Behavior; Shore birds -- North America
In my set the ground colors vary from "dark olive buff" to "olive buff."
Two of the eggs are irregularly spotted and blotched with spots of
various sizes; one is quite evenly marked with small elongated spots;
and another is sparingly spotted and blotched, chiefly about the larger
end. The colors of the markings are "Saccardo's umber," "bister" and
"warm sepia," with underlying markings of "deep" to "pale brownish
drab." In other collections I have seen a number of sets that matched
almost exactly certain types of heavily blotched eggs of the Wilson
snipe; these may be within the normal range of dowitcher's eggs; but I
have always been suspicious that some of them were wrongly identified.
The measurements of 79 eggs average 41.8 by 28.9 millimeters; the eggs
showing the four extremes measures =45.5= by 30.5, 44 by =32=, =37.5= by
29.2 and 39.4 by =26.3= millimeters.
_Young._--H. B. Conover has sent me the following interesting notes:
Newly hatched young were found June 22nd. The incubation period
seems to be about 20 days. A nest found by Murie on May 31 with two
eggs, had four eggs on June 2, and on being visited the evening of
June 22, was found to contain two young and two pipped eggs. The
colors of the soft parts of a downy young several days old were as
follows: Tarsus olive with blackish stripes down the sides, bill
black, iris brown. In the newly hatched young the tarsus is much
lighter. On June 23 while visiting the nest of a black-bellied
plover, I came across a pair of dowitchers that from their actions
appeared to have young. Not wishing to stop at the time, I passed
on, but on returning several hours later, found them again in a
marsh at the foot of a long, low hill. When I sat down to watch,
one bird wheeled about me calling, and then flew off down the
valley. The other bird at first I could not locate, but soon saw it
flying about the hillside chirping. I noticed that as this bird
passed over a certain spot, it would hover about 15 feet above the
ground, giving a whistling trill. After a few minutes it dawned on
me, that each time it hovered to give this call, it was a little
farther up the hillside. When I moved up toward the top of the
hill, the bird alighted close by, scolded for a while and then
commenced the same performance as before. In this way in about half
an hour the dowitcher and I had crossed the hill from one marsh to
another, a distance of about 600 yards. During all this time its
mate had appeared only twice, when it flew by calling and then
disappeared again. Finally the bird I was following alighted in the
marsh at the far side of the hill from where we had started, and
began running short distances, stopping and then running on again.
Watching through some field glasses, I soon saw a young one
following at its heels. Rushing down suddenly, three downies were
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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