156 U.S. NATIONAL MUSEUM BULLETIN 23 7 i'art i 



"Mr. Henshaw was collecting here [at Miami] with me on the 19th 

 of January, 1871, when his quick eye detected a small bird among the 

 thick bushes, and he instantly shot it. After making his waj^ into 

 the thicket and searching for a time he returned, bearing his prize, 

 but with a puzzled expression on his countenance, that instantly 

 communicated itself to mine when I saw the little gray bird which 

 he held in his hand, for it was a species which I had never beheld. 

 It proved to be the Black-headed Finch, the first and, up to this date, 

 the only specimen ever taken in the United States". 



A second record is based on a pair of wings from a bird that struck 

 the lighthouse at Sombrero Key, Monroe County, Fla., Apr. 17, 

 1888. The lightkeeper forwarded these, together with the remains 

 of a number of other birds that had struck the lighthouse in passage, 

 to the U.S. National Museum. There, Robert Ridgway misidentified 

 the wings as of Tiaris canora, the Cuban or melodious grassquit, one 

 of the few errors in identification he ever made. On the strength of 

 this, the melodious grassquit remained on the American list for 

 almost 75 years, when a re-examination of the wings revealed their 

 true identity (cf. Austin, 1963). 



In view of the abundance and widespread distribution of this 

 grassquit in the Bahama Islands, it is strange that there are so few 

 subsequent records of its occurrence in Florida. The only ones are 

 recorded by Sprunt (1963) as one seen at Everglades National Park 

 by Louis A. Stimson and C. Russell Mason, Oct. 29, 1960, and one 

 found dead near West Palm Beach by Ralph Browning in mid- 

 December 1962. 



In the Bahamas this tiny finch, which is only about 4K inches in 

 length, is found chiefly about the settlements, in gardens and planta- 

 tions and the borders of thickets. It is common in Nassau and is one 

 of the first birds seen by the visitor to that picturesque town. When 

 feeding, it may be seen on lawns or in tall grass or slu-ubbery near the 

 ground, and often allows a close approach when so engaged. At times 

 small flocks are flushed by the wayside. 



Nesting.- — The nest is a rather rouglily built but compact structure, 

 globular in shape, with an opening at one side that varies in size. It 

 is composed outwardly of coarse grasses and weed stalks, the interior 

 cup lined with softer, finer grasses. 



Bonhote (1903) states that the nest is situated at heights varying 

 from 4 to 10 feet above the ground, and "generally placed on the top 

 of a small sapling." A nest in process of construction that I found in 

 Nassau was at least 20 feet above the ground in a dead frond of a 

 royal palm. Another was in a flower pot that hung from the ceiling 

 of a hotel porch in Nassau. 



