284 NOTES ON THE 



skin from one side of its neck. The unfortunate birdling was 

 immediately restored to its place by the employment of a long 

 ladder. Of course it was an easy matter to distinguish this 

 one from the others by the disfigured neck while the family 

 remained about there, which it did until its departure with the 

 others southward. 



Nothing more was thought of the circumstance till the fol- 

 lowing spring, when a pair of orioles commenced building in 

 another tree near by, gathering their strings and threads from 

 the debris of the chip-pile under the window, with which to 

 construct the frame work of the nest. The disfigurement men- 

 tioned, arrested the attention of those who first saw them, 

 as it was on the male. For five successive years this individ- 

 ual returned and built on different trees within a hundred yards 

 of the house, and after a little painstaking was identified, 

 thus affording a perfectly consecutive history of the modifica 

 tion of the colors of the plumage under the ordinary circum- 

 stances of observation. Many other similar instances of other 

 species might be introduced. The one narrated affords a sug- 

 gestion for means of determining many interesting questions 

 in this department of natural history. The orioles all disap- 

 pear with the advent of the frosts of autumn. 



SPECIFIC CHARACTERS. 



Tail nearly even; head all around and to the middle of the 

 back, scapulars, wings, and upper surface of tail, black; rest 

 of under parts, rump, upper tail coverts, lesser wing coverts, 

 and terminal portions of tail feathers except the two inner- 

 most, orange-red; edge of wing quills, and a band across the 

 tips of the greater coverts, white. 



Length, 7.50; wing, 3.75; tail, 2. 



Habitat, eastern United States to the Rocky mountains. 



SCOLECOPHAGUS CAUOLINUS (Muller). (509.) 

 RUSTY BLACKBIRD. 



This blackbird is most noticable in the fall migration when it 

 is abundant in association with the other species of its genus. 

 It arrives in the spring about the first of April and disappears 

 again about the first to the tenth of May moving further north 

 to breed. Although I have discovered no nests, nor have any 

 been reported to me, yet I am satisfied from many observa- 

 tions of their return here at the beginning of October, and 

 other circumstances I might mention, they probably breed in 

 and around the vicinity of Lake Superior in considerable num- 



