48 BULLETIN 17 9, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



Wliile Curtler does not stress the grayness of these birds in so 

 many words, he was certainly impressed by it because he thought 

 at first he was seeing a shrike! He is the only correspondent who 

 likens the species to that bird, an impression I have always enter- 

 tained since seeing my first specimen ! It will be noted too that 

 these three New England records have each occurred in a different 

 fall month; Maine in September, Massachusetts in October and 

 November. 



The most extraordinary extralimital occurrence of the gray king- 

 bird is the sole Canadian record, of which P. A. Taverner (1934) 

 has very aptly said: "An accidental straggler that may never occur 

 again within our borders." The bare facts of this amazing record 

 are that on September 29, 1889, a specimen was secured by a Miss 

 Cox at Cape Beale, on the west coast of Vancouver Island, and was 

 presented to and still exists in the Provincial Museum, Victoria. 

 What it was doing there will forever remain a mystery. So far as 

 I am aware, the possibility that it was a cagebird was not raised. 



It is extremely doubtful whether the gray kingbird ever remains 

 in south Florida in winter. Everything points to the fact that it 

 leaves this country completely. There is but a single record of its 

 occurrence in winter in the United States, this being quoted by 

 Arthur H. Howell (1932). He states that "Dr. H. C. Burgess saw 

 one at Royal Palm Hammock, December 26 to 28, 1917, which occur- 

 rence seems to indicate that a few pass the winter in extreme southern 

 Florida." This seems to be a very tenuous thread on which to base 

 an assumption of this sort. It is tremendously more likely that 

 the Burgess specimen was a belated migrant. December 26 is not 

 an excessively late date, and the apparently complete absence of 

 January and February records would be much more indicative that 

 the species does not pass the winter in south Florida. 



To those thoroughly familiar with south Florida, Howell's nomen- 

 clature of the locality of the Burgess specimen tends toward confu- 

 sion, for he consistently confuses Royal Palm Hammock with 

 Paradise Key, considering the two to be synonymous terms for the 

 same locality (Howell, 1932, p. 61). As a matter of fact, the two 

 are entirely different places, removed from each other by a hundred 

 miles of road. Paradise Key is Royal Palm State Parh^ situated 

 about 12 miles southwest of Homestead, Dade County, in the lower 

 Everglades. (This is the location of the Burgess observation.) 

 Royal Palm Hammock is about 14 miles west of Carnestown, Col- 

 lier County, on the Tamiami Trail, between Everglades City and 

 Naples. It even appears on most road maps. 



In connection with the sanctuary work of the Audubon Society, 

 I spend about two weeks out of every month in south Florida, 



