3U ANNUAL REPORT OF THE OfE. Doc. 



shown with two plumages. The male and female scarlet tanager is 

 one of the best examples and I wanted to show that particularly 

 on account of the changes in plumage. 



Probably all of you are familiar with the bird, the upper one 

 there, showing the fully adult scarlet tanager in the full plumage; 

 the one at the bottom is the female; the one in the middle is the 

 male in the transition period. The scarlet tanager nests in this 

 part of the country and all through the eastern part of the United 

 States, and then in the fall, as soon as the young are fully grown 

 and out of the way, the male begins to change its plumage from 

 the scarlet and black to a plumage like the female; that is the 

 greenish yellow, except that it keeps the black wings. It goes down 

 to South America for the winter and winters there in that greenish 

 yellow plumage; then as it comes north in the spring, it begins to 

 ahed those greenish yellow feathers and gets the red and as it 

 comes into the Gulf states of the United States in the spring, it is 

 like this middle colored bird, just changing from the greenish yellow 

 to the red. By the time it gets here, the greenish feathers have 

 all dropped out and you have the scarlet and black bird you are 

 familiar with. 



The chimney swift is another migratory bird and apparently in- 

 teresting from the fact that it is the only North American bird 

 whose winter home we do not know. We have in North America 

 about 800 different kinds of birds, and we know where everyone 

 winters except the chimney swift, and it is one of our most abundant 

 birds. We can trace it in late September and early October as it 

 goes south and gets down to the Gulf states about the middle of 

 October, and then it disappears. It could not disappear any more 

 thoroughly if it was true, as used to be thought, that the chimney 

 swift went down into the water and hibernated in the mud at the 

 bottom of the ocean and the Mediterranean Sea; that was the old 

 idea, and they could not disappear any more thoroughly if that 

 was the fact and then five months later, along in April, they come 

 back in their full numbers ; but we do not yet know where the chimney 

 swift spends the winter. I had a most interesting experience with 

 these chimney swifts a few weeks ago. I was up at Harper's Ferry 

 and over on the bank of the Shenandoah, opposite the town, 

 I was there about six in the evening and happened to look over 

 towards Harper's Ferry and I saw a large number of swifts circling 

 around the town. I knew that meant that they were intending to 

 spend the night in some chimney in the city, so we watched them 

 there for a while and then concluded that we would go over nearer 

 to them. As we started across the bridge, those circling clouds be- 

 gan to drop down into the chimney of one of the churches there 

 which was right in plain sight and a great number of the birds 

 went into that chimney while we were crossing the river. Then 

 we went over till we were near the base of the chimney and I 

 said, "We will stand here now and count as well as we can the 

 rest of them that go in." The numbers had been increasing all 

 the time by recruits and we got where we had a perfect view of 

 the birds as they would drop down into the chimney and although 

 I could not count them exactly, yet I tried to have my count -lower 

 than the truth rather than above, and we stood there for about an 

 hour and a quarter, while those swifts were going into that chimney, 

 and my count was 4,700 that went in. We estimated that a thou- 



