132 BULLETIN 19 7, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



half dozen species of liis "life list." Thongli having shown it to many 

 others for their "first" since, long acquaintance with it has not dimmed 

 interest in its attractive way of life. 



Misunderstood and rather frov/ned upon by the uninformed, the 

 loggerhead is one of the decidedly beneficial and valuable birds of its 

 range and its activities are a natural asset of no mean proportions. 

 As its name implies, it was described from Louisiana, by Linnaeus, but 

 the bird is no more typical of that State than many other parts of its 

 habitat. 



Spring. — There is little change in the seasonal numbers of the 

 loggerhead in most of its range except in the northern limits. Else- 

 where the population remains largely static as the species is resident 

 throughout most of the country it frequents. Certainly, numbers in 

 coastal South Carolina, Georgia, most of Florida, and the Gulf coast 

 do not vary appreciably. In North Carolina (eastern) there is a 

 slight southward movement in fall and a return in spring but it is not 

 pronounced. Some confusion may exist in that State by the overlap- 

 ping occurrence of L. I. migrans and the difficulty of differentiating 

 between the tMo in the field. That both ludovicianus and migrans 

 occur together there has been demonstrated by T. D. Burleigh, who 

 secured specimens of each at Tarboro, Edgecombe County, N. C, in 

 January 1931 (Pearson and Brimley, 1912). 



Courtship. — ^The courtship performance is not particularly elab- 

 orate or widely commented upon. It is undertaken with much flutter- 

 ing of the wings and some spreading of the tail in display on the part 

 of the male. Considerable erratic chases of the female occur at times, 

 the birds twisting and turning almost like sandpipers over the surf, 

 for apparently the female does not take very kindly to watching the 

 male display at length. 



Audubon (1842) was somewhat cavalier in his opinion of this phase 

 of the loggerhead's way of life. He says flatly that "the male courts 

 the female without much regard, and she, in return, appears to re- 

 ceive his haughty attentions with merely just as much condescension 

 as enables her to become the mother of a family, whose feelings are 

 destined to be of the same cold nature." He follows this later in his 

 account with a quotation from the Rev. John Bachman as follows: 

 "You speak of the male showing but little attachment to the female. 

 I have thought differently, and so would you were you to watch him 

 carrying * * * a grasshopper or cricket to her, pouncing upon 

 the Crow and even the Buzzard, that approach the nest, and invariably 

 driving these intruders away. Indeed I consider these birds as evi- 

 dencing great attachment toward each other." 



Living in the same area from which Dr. Bachman wrote these 

 words, and where he saw so much of the loggerhead, the writer agrees 



