228 BULLETIN 196, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



evidence all summer, we rarely hear or catch sight of the birds, 

 although some doubtless remain for a time, silent and inconspicuous, 

 on their nesting grounds before starting on their migration. Taverner 

 and Swales (1908) report from Point Pelee that in 1907 they "saw 

 them almost daily from August 24 to September 2, after which none 

 were noted, though we remained until the 6th." 



Many of us who have long been attentive to the call notes of noc- 

 turnal migrating birds have heard year after year from the sky at 

 night, during the latter half of August and early September, a clear, 

 softly modulated, mellow whistle. On nights favorable for migra- 

 tion we might hear the notes every few seconds as the birds passed 

 overhead — from high in the sky on starlight evenings, from nearer 

 the ground, not far above the tree tops, on misty nights. These 

 whistles correspond with no bird notes we ever heard in the daytime, 

 and for years they remained a puzzle to ornithologists. Finally, in 

 1907, William Brewster, who had wondered since his boyhood what 

 migrating bird might be the author of these notes, discovered that it 

 was the veery. 



Some years later (Winsor M. Tyler, 1916), when writing on the 

 call notes of nocturnal migrating birds, with Mr. Brewster's permis- 

 sion, I told the bare facts of his discovery thus: "For a long time this 

 call note remained a mystery to Mr. Faxon and Mr. Brewster, until 

 finally Mr. Brewster, by a most fortunate chance, solved the problem. 

 He was lying at dawn in his cabin on the shore of the Concord river, 

 when he heard, far in the distance, the familiar whistle of the unknown 

 migrant. The bird, still calling, flew nearer and nearer until it alighted 

 in the shrubbery close by the cabin. Here it continued to call, but 

 gradually changed the character of the note until, little by little, it 

 grew to resemble, and finally became the familiar call of the Veery." 

 Since Brewster's death much material from his journals has been 

 published (Brewster, 1938), including a long account of the veery's 

 nocturnal whistle, to which account the reader is referred. 



DISTRIBUTION 



Range. — Southern Canada to southern Brazil. 



Breeding range. — The species breeds north to southern British 

 Columbia (head of Crooked River; has been recorded north to Davids 

 Lake, Crooked River; McBride, and Tete Jaune Cache); central 

 Alberta (Peace River Landing, Edmonton, and Camrose); southern 

 Saskatchewan (Carlton House, Prince Albert, and Hudson Bay 

 Junction); southern Manitoba (Lake St. Martin and Shoal Lake); 

 southern Ontario (Kenora, Port Arthur, Lake Nipissing, and Ottawa) ; 

 southern Quebec (Quebec, Baie St. Paul, Kamouraska, Anticosti 



