Rare Eggs

The story of an Arctic egg hunt reached Pittsburgh last week. Month ago George Miksch Sutton, onetime Pennsylvania game commissioner, and John Bonner Semple, retired Sewickley, Pa. manufacturer of Navy ordnance* were 40 mi. north of Churchill on the western shore of Hudson's Bay. With them were Olin S. Pettingill of Bowdoin College and Bert Lloyd, Saskatchewan ornithologist. They were collecting birds, plants and insects. Competing with them was a party of the Canadian Ornithological Society. Hope of both groups was to be the first to find eggs of a Harris's sparrow.

When science was young it was possible for a species of goose, whose nesting place had never been found, to be regarded as a creature of marine origin, hatched from a barnacle and thus, not being "flesh," eligible for Roman Catholic dinner tables on Friday. Modern science knows that the barnacle goose reproduces itself by laying eggs in the far North, like many another bird. Ornithologists have found the nest of every bird that flies (or does not fly), with very few exceptions.

One exception of the 800 distinct species and 400 subspecies has been Harris's sparrow (Zonotrichia querula), a stripe-headed little thing which breeds around Churchill, migrates eastward to western Ontaria and, in winter, as far south as southern Texas.

In 1907, Ernest Thompson Seton, literary naturalist, found a Harris's sparrow nest containing several fledglings near Great Slave Lake. The find was important because it proved that the bird builds a grass nest on the ground. But what were the eggs like? The Pennsylvanians and Canadians, in friendly competition last month, were trying to find out.

Mr. Sutton had a special reason for trying to beat the Canadians. Two years ago he was searching for blue goose eggs, and Dr. J. Dewey Soper of the Canadian Department of the Interior found them first.

The two groups near Churchill last month hunted a mile apart, near enough for evening visits, far enough to cover separate terrain. In Pittsburgh last week, Mr. Sutton, eyes bright, told how exciting the end of an egg hunt may be:

"The mother bird had fluttered off her nest right in front of me, leaving it quickly in an effort to conceal it. But I located it almost at once, then shot her and went after the eggs. There were five of them, tiny things that never had been seen by a scientist before.

"I was so glad I yelled at the top of my voice. We had arranged to fire a revolver signal to let other members of the party know if any of us were successful, but I forgot all about that."

Later Egg-Hunter Sutton & friends, and also their Canadian competitors, found more Harris's sparrow eggs--pale green with mottled brown marbling. Mr. Sutton's clutch he will give to the Carnegie Institute at Pittsburgh. (He was once curator of birds at the Carnegie Museum.)

Still waiting for discovery and description are the eggs of the tule goose, a large relative of the white-fronted goose, which winters in California; eggs of the greater snow goose, which nests in northern Greenland (fledglings have been found); breeding grounds of the Ross goose (it has nested in captivity in Holland); nest & eggs of the bristle-thighed curlew which breeds somewhere in Alaska's interior.

*He financed four, accompanied three north country expeditions, including this one.

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