30 BULLETIN 17 9, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



bination of metal, wood, glass, and rubber; man-conceived, man- 

 made, man-governed, but now silent, inert, lifeless. Without a 

 guiding brain it could never be anything else than that. Both were 

 birds of the air, but the one created by an alchemy beyond the ken of 

 even the master minds that built the other. 



Both had just recently come from the Tropics to land upon 

 Florida's shore ; one of them silently, surely, guided by something of 

 unerring accuracy, which shaped its living course without chart 

 or compass; the other, boring northward with four great motors 

 roaring steadily, its sharp hull cleaving the upper air like some 

 fabulous juggernaut. And now, both had reached the goal and the 

 tiny one rested upon its huge imitator, to give a glimpse in com- 

 parison to two bird students, and in the memory of one of them, 

 at least, that brief tableau will remain forever etched. 



Spring- — There is a rather irregular and varied series of dates for 

 the spring arrival of the gray kingbird in Florida. Arthur H. Howell 

 (1932) states that Atkins mentions it as arriving at Key West on 

 April 11. This checks closely with w^hat observations I have been 

 able to gather in that area. Edward M. Moore, the Audubon 

 Society's representative in Key West, was instructed to pay particular 

 attention to this, and in 1938 the bird was first seen on April 12, In 

 1939 it appeared on April 10. And yet it has been reported in Fort 

 Lauderdale on March 25, 1918; New Smyrna, April 3, 1924; and 

 Chokoloskee, April 5, 1928 (Howell). The earliest record for the 

 spring arrival was at the Dry Tortugas, March 16, 1923, and Scott 

 took two birds there on March 23, 1890 (Howell). 



It is my experience that the bird can be seen anywhere in the 

 Florida Keys after April 15, but anyone visiting south Florida prior 

 to April 10 might well be disappointed in not seeing it. In extreme 

 northwestern Florida Francis M. Weston says that "the gray King- 

 bird is a late migrant into the Pensacola region, the westernmost 

 limit of its range, and the earliest arrival dates in my journal are 

 April 26, 1935, and April 27, 1936." 



In South Carolina the few occasions of its arrival have been early 

 in May. Nests with one and two eggs were secured on May 28 and 

 30, which means that the birds probably arrived early that month. 



On May 17, 1927, Arthur T. Wayne and I saw a gi-ay kingbird on 

 Oakland Plantation, Charleston County, only a few hundred yards 

 from Mr. Wayne's house. The bird was perched on a plow handle 

 standing in a field. Mr. Wayne was sure that it had a mate and 

 was settled for the summer, so we did not take it. Search of the 

 vicinity, however, failed to reveal another, and nothing more was 

 seen of the bird. Wayne (1927) recorded the observation and ends 

 his note with this comment : "This makes the fifth gray kingbird I have 



