608 abstracts: ornithology 



ORNITHOLOGY. — Third annual list of proposed changes in the A. 0. 

 U. Check-List of North American birds. Harry C. Oberholser. 

 The Auk 35: 200-217. 1918. 

 This is the third annual resume of recent ornithological work in so 

 far as it affects North American birds. Like the first and second lists 

 it comprises only ornithological cases, — i.e., such as require specimens 

 or the identification of descriptions for their determination, and con- 

 sists of additions, eliminations, rejections, and changes of names due 

 to various causes. However, only changes known to be based on 

 revisionary work are included ; therefore no mention is made of changes 

 involved in names used without sufficient explanation in local lists or 

 elsewhere. It is intended to include here everything pertinent up to 

 December 31, 1917, not previously chronicled. Some of these changes 

 date back as far as 1910, but were previously overlooked. The present 

 list summarizes the addition of twenty-three genera either new or 

 raised from subgenera; four subgenera; six species detected for the first 

 time in North America, three of these from Greenland; and forty-nine 

 subspecies either newly described or for the first time found in North 

 America. Besides these there are six new subfamilies. H. C. 0. 



ORNITHOLOGY.— A'eit' light on the status of Empidonax traillii 

 (Audubon). Harry C. Oberholser. Ohio Joui'n. Sci. 18: 85-98, 

 February, 1918. 

 Few birds are as puzzling as the flycatchers of the American genus 

 Empidonax. None of these are more difficult to understand than 

 Empidonax traillii and its closely related forms, the status of which has 

 long been in dispute. At present the name Empidonax traillii traillii 

 is applied to the subspecies from the western United States, and that 

 from Manitoba and the eastern United States is called Empidonax 

 traillii alnorum. A reexamination of the type of Empidonax traillii 

 now shows that it belongs to the eastern race; and this should, there- 

 fore, henceforth stand as Etnpidonax traillii traillii. This race breeds 

 in most of the wooded parts of Canada and Alaska, in the northeastern 

 United States, west to Montana, and south to Maryland, while it 

 winters southward to Ecuador. The subspecies inhabiting the western 

 United States south to Mexico is renamed Empidonax traillii brewsteri. 

 An interesting development of the present study is the discovery of 

 the existence of six more or less well-marked color phases in both of 

 the subspecies. H. C. 0. 



