24 Trans. Acad. Sci. of St. Louis 



OUR HIRDS IN WINTKU. 



Illustrated hy Lifc-Sizo Colored Pictures. 

 (St. Louis Naturalists' Cluh, February 2H, 1920.) 



l''()iiy nicnibers of the St. Louis liinl Club couuted 

 tweuty-seven species of birds in taking- a Cliristnias cen- 

 sus for "Bird Lore," coverin.j^ four scjuare miles in the 

 vicinity of Creve C'oeur Lake on December 27, 1IM1>. The 

 sauie number of species was rejjorted by the St. JiOuis 

 Biiil Club on December 22, 1918, but i:>ent Jokerst and 

 Paul Dent, by makin*^ twelve miles on foot in seven hours 

 on the same day, enumerated forty-four species. This is 

 all one party can be ex])ected to see in one day, but if 

 a few days of observation could have been added and dif- 

 ferent localities visited, the number raiffht have Ihhmi in- 

 creased to fiftv-six, as has been done once bv me. And 

 even this number is possible of a farther increase by 

 some of the casual species that may be met with only l^y 

 a rare chance and of whi<'li there are about ten. 



The three Audubon Charts, thou,ii:h made in ^Fassachu- 



setts, can be used to advantage for our jtui pose, since the 

 l)ird fauna of the United States east of the 100th merid- 

 ian, or about the middle of Kansas, is ])ractically the 

 same. The only drawback is that tliey do not contain all 

 the species mentioned. 



Beginning: at the u])]ier left corner of Chart No. .3, the 

 Northern Shrike oi" I'utclierbird, Fjanius horrnli.'i, comes 

 to us in November and leaves us in March. It breeds in 

 Canada and Alaska and winters in the northeiii I'liited 

 States and as far to the south as North Carolina, Ken- 

 tucky, Arkansas, Texas ;iiid Central Californin. It is a 

 larger bird than the Sliiike which is witli us in the sum- 

 mer, fonnerly called Loggerhead, now Migrant Shrike, 

 one of the several subspecies of the TiOggerhead, The 

 typical Loggerhead, at home only in the southern states, 

 ditTers from the ^figrant in having the wings slightly 

 shorter and the general coloration darker. In western 



