46 BULLETIN 135, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



casual records as far north as Nova Scotia and Quebec and as far 

 west as Wisconsin and Colorado; it seems likely that these records 

 were made by wanderers from Florida or Cuba and not by stragglers 

 from the Eastern Hemisphere. The problem is complicated by the 

 fact that the white-faced glossy ibis has been found breeding in Flor- 

 ida. Mr. William Brewster (1886) obtained a set of eggs of this 

 western species from Mr. C. J. Maynard, who received them " directly 

 from the collector, a young man by the name of Lapham — accom- 

 panied by the skin of the female parent, which was shot on the nest." 

 The specimens were "taken April 18, 1886, at or near Lake Wash- 

 ington (near the head of the St. Johns River), Florida." Another 

 very interesting, but puzzling, fact was discovered by Oscar E. Bay- 

 nard (1913), who has given us the best account of the nesting habits 

 of the glossy ibis in Florida. He collected one of the parent birds 

 and thought at first that it was a white-faced glossy ibis, because the 

 bare skin of the head was "pure white where the feathers join the 

 skin for the full length across the front of the head extending down 

 to the upper corner of the eye" and again "starting at the lower cor- 

 ner of the eye, the white streak extends down to the lower side of 

 the lower mandible." This is well illustrated in his two photographs. 

 This white sHn might easily be mistaken for the white feathers in 

 the face of the white-faced species and thus lead to much confusion. 

 I can fmd no allusion to this character in any of the books on Amer- 

 ican or European birds and it seems hardly likely that all could have 

 overlooked it, if it is a common character in normal birds. Mr. Bay- 

 nard's bird may have been an abnormal bird; or this may be an 

 overlooked character, perhaps present only during the height of the 

 breeding season, in a distinct species found only in Florida and the 

 West Indies, where it is a rare bird and seldom collected. 



Nesting. — Mr. Baynard's (1913) observations in Florida give us 

 about all the information we have on the home life of this species, 

 in North America; he writes: 



Glossy ibis bred on Orange Lake for four years of the five since I first saw it 

 there; this year they did not nest there for some cause. I have seen glossy ibis 

 once in 1912 in the month of November on the flats of the Miakka River and on 

 two occasions on the canal that is the extension of the Caloosahatchee River 

 leading into Lake Okeechobee. I have heard of it being seen by a hvmter and 

 trapper on the Kissimmee River, but it must be considered very rare in Florida. 

 I have talked with scores of hunters and trappers, men who are observant and 

 know their birds well, and but two have described the "black curlew" to me, 

 and neither of them saw it in the nesting season, so no doubt the only nesting 

 records for Florida are from Alachua County, where for four years I have 

 found them nesting on Orange Lake. For the four years previous to 1909 I 

 know it did not nest on Orange Lake, as I spent too much time there to miss see- 

 ing it. It must have bred there formerly though, as I understand a set was taken 

 in that section about a dozen or more years ago by a gentleman who was stay- 

 ing in Micanopy. 



