Hints to Audubon Workers. 



letter in my possession, as the communica- 

 tion is quite a long one, and, moreover, it 

 has already been published (see Nutt. Orni- 

 tho. Bull., Vol. v., 1880, pp. 202, 203). 



My handful of relics is completed by two 

 other pictures also given to my family by 

 old Mrs. Audubon; one is a picture of her- 

 self taken in New York a few years before 

 she died, and the other of her son John 

 Woodhouse Audubon, taken at the same 

 time. I have copied these by photography 

 and here add them to the group shown in 

 the illustrations. 



Very often I try and place the living 

 Audubon in our midst to-day and wonder 

 to myself how he would regard matters 

 ornithological of the present time. We 

 must believe he was too much a lover of the 

 woods and fields to have ever become con- 

 tented with the closet study of ornithology, 

 least of all with an "official" position under 

 the Government to grind out his magnificent 

 works of art, and his soul-inspiring descrip- 



tions of them. No, we could never have 

 caged an Audubon — never in the world. We 

 undoubtedly would have had another great 

 volume of plates with the text giving all 

 the unfigured birds of our domains — west 

 and in Alaska. Then I must think he would 

 naturally have passed to the mammalian 

 fauna, as his tastes were evidently in that 

 direction. 



We must also believe that he would have 

 looked with favor upon the organization of 

 the American Ornithologists' Union, and 

 heartily lent his aid to the support of its 

 present movements. Even more than this, 

 I believe he would have hailed with welcome 

 the organization of the Audubon Society, 

 and done all in his power to further its ends. 

 For be it said, notwithstanding the numer- 

 ous birds Audubon must have taken in his 

 long lifetime, he never took the life of a 

 single one unless he had a very definite use 

 for the specimen. Every line in his im- 

 mortal work goes to prove that fact. 



R. W. Shufeldt. 



HINTS TO AUDUBON WORKERS.* 



FIFTY COMMON BIRDS AND HOW TO KNOW THEM. 



IX. 



SLATE-COLORED JUNCO; SNOWBIRD. 



EARLY in September you may have 

 found the juncos, companies of little 

 gray-robed monks and nuns, just emerging 

 from the forests where they cloister during 

 the summer months. Most of them nest as 

 far north as the line from northern Maine 

 to Alaska, but Mr. Chadbourne has found 

 them " from the base to the bare rocky sum- 

 mits" of the White Mountains in July, with 

 "newly fledged young;"* and they also nest 

 in the Catskills, the Adirondacks, and even 

 in comparatively open deciduous woods on 

 the borders of the Adirondacks. 



But though they may build in your local- 

 ity, as they do here, their habits, like those 



* The Auk, April, 1887, Vol. IV., No. 2, p. 105. 



of the chickadee, are greatly changed in 

 summer, and you will take more than one 

 casual walk through the woods before you 

 discover them. They are no longer in flocks, 

 but in pairs, and I consider myself fortu- 

 nate if I can get a timid look from one from 

 among the dead branches of a fallen treetop. 

 Early last May I was delighted to see a 

 pair on the edge of the raspberry patch, but 

 though they inspected the recesses of a pile 

 of brush, seemed greatly interested in the 

 nooks and crannies of an upturned root and 

 reviewed the attractions of a pretty young 

 hemlock that stood in a moss-grown swamp 

 on the border of the patch, I suspect it was 

 only a feint, and when they came to the grave 

 business of house choosing, they followed 



* Copyright, 1888, by Florence A. Merriam. 



