169 



The season of mj' investigations extended from the 20th of May 

 until the middle of August, 18f»9. Tlie area which the}' covered com- 

 prised the immediate vicinity of Salt Lake City, where most of the 

 month of May was passed, and where a few birds were collected by 

 me the previous October. In the early part of June a trip was 

 taken to the large islands, Antelope, Stansbury and Carrington, in 

 the Great Salt Luke. On the 23d of the latter month our camp was 

 removed to Parley's Park, an elevated meadow in the Wahsatch moun- 

 tains, about twenty-five miles east of Salt Lake City. In Parley's 

 Park a rich bird-fauna was found, and I had the good fortune to be 

 there in the height of the breeding season. About the beginning of 

 July, an excursion was made to the western spur of the Uintah Moun- 

 tains, crossing Kamas Prairie on the way. Returning along the Provo 

 River, passing by Utah Lake, and thence northward along the western 

 base of the Wahsatch, to Salt Lake City, the field of my observations 

 was still farther extended. 



Throughout this considerable area of country no marked local vari- 

 ations in the bird-fauna were noticed, beyond occasionally the occur- 

 rence at a certain point of a species not noticed elsewhere. Thus, 

 on Antelope Island, the true Empidonax TraiUii was obtained. In 

 Kamas Prairie, Actitiinis Bartramius was noticed, while along the 

 Provo River, Tardus fuscescens was very abundant. In Parley's Park, 

 a single individual of Calamospiza bicolor was seen and obtained, 

 and at Salt Lake City the Melanerpes erythrocpphalus was seen. Of 

 course the necessary diversity of woodland, desert and aquatic fauna? 

 was everywhere observed in their respective haunts, but the same 

 kind of locality was inhabited by the same characteristic set of birds, 

 wherever we went. 



The western water-shed of the Wahsatch Mountains is a region 

 remarkable as forming a natural, and nearly abrupt, limit to the 

 westward range of the bulk of the species characterizing the eastern 

 region of North America, though the western fauna overlaps for a 

 distance of nearly one thousand miles to the eastward. In the Ornfs 

 of the Salt Lake Valley there is thus a combination of these two 

 opposite fauna}, which gives to it an interesting variety and peculiar 

 richness, compared with other western localities. This mixture of 

 eastern and western birds at first i-ather surprises the collector in this - 

 section, for it is so far witiiin the area of the western region that the 

 former are supposed to be all left beliind. Taking the vicinity of 

 Salt Lake City, the collector will find, in the lower portions of the 

 canons of the Wahsatch, the Cat-bird (Galeoscoptes CaroUnnisis'), 

 skulking through the same thickets with the Woodhouse's Jay (Cyan- 

 ocitta Floridana, var. Woodhoiisei), while the Olive-backed Thrush 

 (Turdits Stcainsonii)jo\nfi in song with the Solitaire (Myiad> stes Tovni- 



