No. 6. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 343 



as far up iii the State as this, but it does come up just about 

 to Beaver. It is quite abuudaut in southeastern Pennsylvania. As 

 I say, it is an example of the bird which is absolutely uon-inigratory. 

 Most cardinals are hatched and live and die and never go ten miles 

 from the place where they were originally hatched. 



The screech owl is another example of an absolutely non-migra- 

 tory bird, staying the entire year right within sight of the home 

 spot. 



The goldfinch is another example of a non-migratory bird, with 

 this difference — most people know the bird through the summer 

 in that upper plumage there when it is black and yellow, but in 

 the wintertime, the bird changes to another plumage represented by 

 the lower bird, and a good many people that are familiar with the 

 summer bird do not know it in that winter plumage; but the bird 

 is here all the year. 



Then we come to a series of birds — I have three or four of them — 

 which are just on the dividing line. The meadow lark with you up 

 here would be a strictly migratory bird ; with us in Washington and 

 up as far along the coast as New York City, it is on the dividing 

 line between migratory and resident. We have meadow larks with 

 us at Washington all the year, though it is not probable that any 

 one meadow lark stays there all the time. Our summer meadow 

 lark goes south for the winter and their places are taken by meadow 

 larks that come in from the north. But you see the legal point 

 is this, that if we should undertake to arrest a person for shooting 

 a meadow lark there under the National law, he could claim that 

 that particular meadow lark that he shot was one that had stayed 

 there all the year and consequently did not come under the Federal 

 law, and we could not disprove it; the burden of proof would be 

 on us to prove that that particular bird was migratory and we could 

 not do it. The same applies to the red winged blackbird, although 

 95% of the red winged blackbirds are migratory, yet last winter, 

 for instance, we had a few that stayed right through the entire 

 winter, so that although up here they would certainly come under the 

 migratory law, it would be a disputed point with us. And the 

 same applies to the flicker, those birds which are most of them 

 migratory, but a few" individuals stay through the season. 



Among the earliest migratory birds to come to Washington is this 

 brown thresher, and I take that particularly because that is a photo- 

 graph from one of the most celebrated of Audubon's plates, the brown 

 thresher being attacked by a blacksnake and the other birds coming 

 to the rescue. 



Among the migratory birds that come down from the north and 

 stay with us through the winter, is the golden crowned kinglet, so 

 named from its crown. Among the real migratory birds is the red- 

 start. That is as good an example as you can get of the common 

 bird showing the three plumages, the full adult male at the top, 

 the adult female in the middle and the lower bird is the one year 

 old male which has the white throat of the female but shows a 

 few feathers of the black coat which it is going to have next year. 

 The Baltimore oriole is an example of a strictly migratory bird, 

 going^ outside the United States for the winter and returning for 

 the summer, and the same is true of the indigo bird, which is also 



