80 U. S. NATIONAL MUSEUM BULLETIN 211 



November 29; Hobart, November 21. Illinois — Deerfield, December 

 3; Chicago, November 20 (average of 11 years, October 25). Mis- 

 souri — Columbia, December 8. Kentucky — Danville, November 25. 

 Arkansas — -Helena, November 23. New Brunswick — Grand Manan, 

 October 23. Quebec — Hatley, November 14. Maine — Portland, 

 November 10. New Hampshire — West Littleton, November 15. 

 Vermont — Rutland, December 5. Massachusetts, Essex County, 

 November 26. Connecticut — Fairfield, November 28. New York — 

 New York City, November 27; Watertown, November 18. New 

 Jersey — Kirkwood, December 5. Pennsylvania— Erie, November 29. 

 Maryland — Laurel, November 27. West Virginia — Bluefield, Decem- 

 ber 2. 



STURNELLA MAGNA ARGUTULA (Bangs) 



Southern Meadowlark 



Plate 5 

 HABITS 



In naming and describing this southern race, Outram Bangs (1899) 

 gives it the following subspecific characters: "Size much less than in 

 true S. magna, though the proportions remain about the same; 

 yellow of under parts more intense; upper parts much darker in color, 

 the dark central areas of the feathers being much greater in extent and 

 the light edges much less; tail and wings darker, the barring on middle 

 rectrices, and on secondaries, tertials and wing coverts, much wider 

 and more pronounced. The general effects produced by these 

 differences are, in S. magna magna, a large bird with paler yellow 

 under parts and a lighter brown back; in S. magna argutula a small 

 bird with deeper yellow under parts and a very dark brown back." 



He says that its range, "though reaching its extreme differentiation 

 in peninsular Florida, extends along the Gulf coast to Louisiana, and 

 thence up the Mississippi Valley to Indiana and Illinois." The 

 A. O. U. Check-List extends its range to South Carolina and to north- 

 eastern Oklahoma and northern Arkansas. 



The southern meadowlark is widely distributed and fairly common 

 throughout Florida in all suitable localities, the prairies, the grassy 

 plains, and the more open places in the flat pine woods, where the 

 ground is not covered with saw palmettos. A few miles west from 

 Melbourne, in 1902, we drove through a fine stand of tall pines, 

 widely scattered, with large areas of open grasslands between them 

 and an occasional slough or shallow pond. Here, and on the broad 

 expanse of open prairie which extended for miles toward the St. 

 Johns marshes, we found the meadowlarks really abundant. 



