8o JOURNAL OF MAINE ORNITHOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



Maine, yet it has been reported, in each instance without capture of 

 a specimen, from the following localities: Franklin, 1906 (D. W. 

 Sweet. Journ. Orn. Soc, VII, p. 81); Oxford, 1899 (A. P. Larra- 

 bee, verbal); Piscataquis, 1898 (F. H. Allen, Auk, XV, p. 60)." 



In a note on the recent Status of the Meadow Lark, Mr. Norton 

 has this to say : 



"In 1882, in his 'Catalogue of Birds Found in the Vicinity of 

 Portland, Maine,' Mr. Nathan Clifford Brown stated that this bird 

 was a rare summer resident, oftenest seen in migrations. The ex- 

 treme dates then given were April 22 and Nov. 3. 



"To-day the conditions are decidedly different, and while the 

 increase of which I shall speak seems to have been somewhat gen- 

 eral in the southwest quarter of the State, I shall confine my 

 remarks strictly to the section embraced in Mr. Brown's paper of 

 1882, viz., the vicinity of Portland. I had been collecting several 

 seasons in fields in which the bird is now regularly seen in some 

 numbers without meeting a specimen until 1891, when I found and 

 collected a lone specimen at Westbrook. In August of the same 

 3^ear, in fields I had regularly visited in the adjoining town of Gor- 

 ham, two small flocks, one of five, and one of eight birds, were seen. 

 From that time to the present, May, 1909, there has been a slow but 

 positive increase and dispersal of the birds through the section. 

 They are not only rather plentiful in certain Westbrook and Gorham 

 fields, but are to be found in several places in the very outskirts of 

 the city of Portland, and also in Falmouth and vScarborough. 



"The earliest date on which I have noted the bird's occurrence 

 in spring is March 27. They have frequently shown a tendency to 

 remain late in fall, having been recorded in November several years, 

 in December twice, and in January once, in Westbrook. The win- 

 ter just passed, 1908-09, a small flock actually wintered on the 

 marshes back of Pine Point Beach, in Scarborough, where they were 

 watched with great interest by Mr. Walker, agent of the Pine Point 

 R. R. station." 



