BIRDS OF THE CAMBRIDGE REGION. 275 



160. Ammodramus nelsoni subvirgatus (Dwight). 

 Acadian Sharp-tailed Sparrow. Acadian Sharp-tailed Finch. 



Formerly a transient visitor, abundant in autumn. 



SEASONAL OCCURRENCE. 



May 31, 1871, one taken, Cambridge, H. W. Henshaw.i 



October 5, 1S70, ten shot, numbers seen, Cambridgeport, H. W. Henshaw. 

 October 9, 1S71, two males- and one female- taken, Cambridgeport, W. Brewster. 



Acadian Sharp-tailed Sparrows used to be found regularly in autumn and 

 occasionally in spring, in the Cambridgeport Marshes. They were sometimes 

 seen on Whittemore Point, but much oftener and more numerously in the beds 

 of tall sedge which fringed the shores and tidal creeks of the lower, wetter 

 marshes a little further to the westward. Here they occurred so abundantly 

 at times — especially during easterly storms — that forty or fifty birds could 

 often be started in a few hours, while on one occasion (October 7, 1871) Mr. H. 

 W. Henshaw saw upwards of two hundred in the course of a single day. 

 Without question they also frequented the Longfellow Marshes, btit I cannot 

 remember that we ever looked for them there at the proper season. 



During the years (i 868-1 876) when I used to devote a good deal of time 

 to hunting Wilson's Snipe in the region about Fresh Pond, my dogs occasion- 

 ally flushed Sharp-tailed Finches in autumn in the marshes lying to the north- 

 ward of the Glacialis, and on October 20, 1874, I found one in a narrow strip 

 of meadow surrounded by thickets in the Brickyard Swamp. There can be 

 little doubt that some of these birds were Acadian Sharp-tails, but the only 

 specimen that I killed and preserved is referable to the closely allied form nelsoni, 

 as I have just stated in another connection. 



On June i, 1869, I shot a Sharp-tail on a grassy floating island that formerly 

 existed in the little pond immediately at the rear of Mount Auburn. This speci- 

 men,-^ which is still in my possession, is colored and marked precisely like typical 

 representatives of siibvirgatiis, but in respect to its general size, and to the size 

 and shape of its bill, it is an ultra-typical example of caudaattits. As the place 

 where it was killed was unsuited for a breeding ground, the bird must have 



' H. W. Henshaw, Auk, IV, 18S7, 236. 



2 Males, nos. 2S25, 2S26, female, no. Sgo, collection of William Brewster. 



^No. 30,807, collection of William Brewster. 



