YOL, 11. | Oregon's Imported Songsters. 7 
Contract was made with a resident of the Herz Mountains to cap- 
ture and bring to Portland in the spring of 1889 one thousand 
birds, embracing from ten to twenty-five pairs each of sky lark, 
starling, nightingale, gray thrush, black thrush, ring auzel, black- 
headed nightingale, linnet, bullfinch, chaffinch, goldfinch, green- 
finch and European quail. It was the intention of the society to 
make the first shipment largely experimental, and, if successful in 
naturalizing those first introduced, to make other importations later. 
The first shipment of birds reached Portland in May, 1889, and 
consisted, I was told by Mr. Pfluger, of nine pair of black-headed 
nightingales (Sy/via melanocephala?)*, one pair of nightingales 
(Luscinia philomela), the rest having died; sixteen pair of black 
thrushes ( Zurdus merula), eight pair of song thrushes ( 7. ma- 
sicus), forty pair of goldfinches (Carduelis carduelis), nineteen 
bullfinches (Pyrrhula rubicilla), of which sixteen were males, most 
of the females having died before reaching Portland; forty pair of 
greenfinches (Chrysomitris spinus ?), thirty-five pair chaffinches 
(Fringilia celebs), thirty-six pair linnets (7. cannabina), twenty- 
one pair crossbills (Loxia curvirostra), twenty pair starlings 
(Sturnus vulgaris), eighteen pair skylarks ( A/auda arvensis ), and 
five pair of European quail ( Cofurnix coturnix ). 
The quail and six pair of skylarks were released near Salem, a 
few larks and starlings near McMinnville, Yamhill County, and the 
remainder of the shipment at and near Portland. 
Regarding the success of the experiment little can be said at 
this early day; many of the birds undoubtedly returned in the 
spring of 1890 to the vicinity of their haunts of the preceding sum- 
mer, as starlings were reported from McMinnville and quail and 
larks from Salem, upon good authority. The goldfinches and larks 
are said to have done well about Portland, and to have increased 
largely; black thrushes were also reported. Owing, however, to con- 
flicting testimony it is very difficult to get any reliable information 
_ regarding the different species, few people being able to discriminate 
_ *For the identification of the species mentioned in this paper I am obliged to 
_ depend partly upon the descriptions of the birds, as given me ,by Messrs. Dekum 
and Pfluger and partly upon a colored print and list of the species which appeared 
in ‘‘ The West Shore ’’ for March, 1889. Some doubt exists in several cases as to 
what species was introduced, and in such cases an interrogation mark follows the 
technical name. 
