ORNITHOLOGIST 



— AND — 



OOLOGIST. 



Notes on the Range of the Protho- 

 notary Warbler in Indiana. 



BY ASIOS \V. IllTI.KU, HIil >l )K V II.I.E, IM). 



Naturally one's attention is tiist (iiicctt'ci to 

 the knowledge at hand when he begins his in- 

 vestigation, such has been the wiitei's course, 

 and with some general remarks coneerning our 

 knowledge heretofore of the distiibiition of 

 Prvtoniitarld citrea. this short article should be- 

 gin. With all the attention that has been paid 

 in recent years to this brilliautly jjluinaged 

 species, comparatively little has been written 

 concerning its northward range ; in fact, except 

 in a general way, not much is known of its dis- 

 tribution. 



Professor Baird in \ol. IX., Pacific liailroad 

 Reports, says of its range: "South Atlantic 

 and Gulf States to mouth of Ohio north." Jle 

 mentions three specimens in the Smithsonian 

 colleition from Southern illinois. t'oues" Key, 

 edition of 1872, gives the same southern boun- 

 daries, but says : " Straying, however, to Ohio, 

 Missouri, and even Maine." Mr. Ridgway"s 

 Manual gives it as occurring in: "Willow 

 swamps and borders of ponds and streams in 

 bottom lands of the Mississippi Valley and 

 Gulf States, north regularly to Iowa, Illinois, 

 Indiana, etc." So far, in the standard woiks. 

 its northern range has not been ap|)roximated 

 within p<Mhaps two hundred miles. The works 

 which treat of local or state bird fauna, give 

 one somewhat more satisfactory answers to his 

 inquiries. Mr. Nelson, in his " Birds of South- 

 ern Illinois," gives it as common in that i)artof 

 the State; and, in his later work on '• Birds 

 of Northeastern Illinois," gives it as a " rare 

 summer resident " in the district treated. Dr. 

 Kidgway, in "Birds of Illinois," 18cSl, says: 

 " .Vbundant in Southern counties, rare north- 

 ward." Dr. Wheaton, in his "Report on the 

 Birds of Ohio," Vol. IV., of the geologi(^al sur- 

 vey of that State, says : " Only known in this 



State as a summer resident in Western Ohio, 

 especially in the vicinity of St. Mary"s Reser- 

 voii." Dr. r.angdon, in his " Birds of the 

 vicinity of Cincinnati," 1877, and in his "re- 

 vised list," 1870, does not include the Protho- 

 notary Warbler as having been taken in South- 

 western Ohio, but. on account of its having 

 been taken taken at St. Mary"s Reservoir, indi- 

 cates the prob;ilile occurrence of the species. 



Until within the past few yeai-s, so far as the 

 public is informed, this species had not been 

 taken in Indiana. Dr. Hayniond did not in- 

 clude it in his list of Southeastern Indiana 

 Birds in the Proceedings of the Philadelphia 

 Academy for 185G, nor in his Birds of Franklin 

 County, published in the State Geological Re- 

 port for 1809. Doubtless some of the collec- 

 tors in the lower Wabash Valley may not have 

 noticed this conspicuous bird, but the Bulletin 

 of the Nuttall Oinithological Club for October, 

 1878, contains a paper by William Brewster on 

 "The Prothonotary Warbler," which is the 

 first notice I have of its occurrence within this 

 State. This is supplemented by Mr. Ridgway's 

 paper in the same magazine for January, 1882, 

 which treats of the birds observed in Knox 

 County, Indiana. Both of these papers refer to 

 the southwestern part of the State. Nothing 

 was known of its extension further to the 

 northward until 1884. May 11, of that year, 

 Mr. U. K. Coale, of Chicago, Ills., found the 

 Prothonotaries very abundant in Starke Coun- 

 ty, in the northwestern part of the State. Sev- 

 eral other times that month and next he vi.sited 

 the same locality, and always found them nu- 

 merous. On one occasion, he notes, " at least 

 fifty pairs :ire nesting within less than a mile." 

 In February, 1S8.'5, Mr. B. \V. Kvermann sup- 

 plied me with a manuscript list of the birds he 

 had observed in Carroll County — which is])rob- 

 ably forty nules south of the locality referred 

 to by Mr. Coale — and therein notes the species 

 under consideration as a " rare sumtner resi- 

 dent." In a memorandum of observations 



Copyright, 1888, by F. H. Carpenter and F. B. Webster. 



