BIOLOGICAL PAPERS. 261 



NOTES FOR 1903 ON THE BIRDS OF KANSAS. 



By F. H. Snow, University of Kansas, Lawrence. 

 Read before the Academy, at Manhattan, November 27, 1903. 



A T the last meeting of the Academy I presented the fifth edition 

 -^-^ of my catalogue of the birds of Kansas. This editidn enumer- 

 ated 342 species and varieties of birds known to rae personally as 

 having occurred in Kansas since the opening of the University of 

 Kansas, in September, 1866. I now have the pleasure of reporting 

 three additional species, as follows : 



I. The Black-bellied Plover {Charadrius squatarola Linn.) 

 This species was included in the preceding editions of my catalogue 

 upon the authority of Prof. Spencer F. Baird, director of the Smith- 

 sonian Institution, but, with thirteen other species authorized by Dr. 

 T. M. Brewer and Professor Baird, was excluded from my fifth edi- 

 tion, which contained only those species whose occurrence in Kansas 

 could be verified by actual captures. On the 22d of May, 1903, I re- 

 ceived from Dr. R. Matthews a mounted specimen of this bird from 

 his own collection. It was captured near Wichita, in 1896, by Mr. 

 Ed. Goldberg. 



II. The Road-runner, or Chaparral Cock ( Geococcyx californi- 

 anus Less.) A special trip to the southwestern corner of Kiowa 

 county, in November, 1903, enabled me to secure the following in- 

 formation : A specimen of this bird was found in the chicken-yard of 

 Mr. W. H. Wilbur one morning in the last week of June, 1903. This 

 yard is surrounded by a coarse wire netting, and the bird, when dis- 

 covered, was making strenuous efforts to escape by running along the 

 fence in search of an opening. Mrs. Wilbur caught the bird with her 

 hands and placed it in a cracker-box covered by an old stove grate. 

 She fed it for two weeks upon grasshoppers and other insects, until 

 becoming weary of the labor of providing its daily food she turned it 

 loose upon the prairie. Mrs. Wilbur had identified this bird froni 

 having been with her brother, Mr. Oris Ham, when the latter shot a 

 specimen of it on January 24, 1901, in Oklahoma, about thirty-five 

 miles south of the Kansas line. The wings and tail of this specimen 

 were preserved so that the identification was entirely satisfactory. 

 The date of capture of the Kansas specimen indicates that the species 

 breeds in Kansas. 



In May, 1903, Prof. Chas. N. Gould, of the University of Okla- 

 homa, whom I met at Englewood, in Clark county, Kansas, gave me 

 he following memorandum: "In the summer of 1894 I saw a chap- 



