PART I. INTRODUCTION. 



(W. W. COOKE.) 



During the Spring of 1882 a series of observations on the migration of birds 

 in the Mississippi Valley was conducted under my supervision. The notes 

 collected were published in the Forest and Stream during October and No- 

 vember of that year. A more extended series has been successfully con- 

 ducted the past Spring, and it is intended in these articles to give the full 

 notes from two points in the Mississippi Valley, namely, St. Louis, Mo., 

 the observer here being Mr. O. Widmann, 4024 Carondelet Avenue; and Jeff- 

 erson, Wis., where I was living the past year. This is done that these notes 

 may serve not only as guides to future observers in determining when to 

 look for each species, but as showing how necessary it is that observations^ 

 to be atall satisfactory, should be full, accurate, taken almost daily, and con- 

 nected with a careful record of the meteorology of the place of observation 



Full as these notes are, compared with the large majority of " Spring 

 notes," a careful study of them will show how much more valuable they 

 would have been had they been connected with a third station mid-way be- 

 tween, and if in connection with them could be had an exact weather report 

 from a place one hundred and fifty or two hundred miles south of St. Louis; 

 since, of course, it will be readily granted by all, that it is not the weather of 

 the place of arrival which controls the movements of our birds — except in 

 rare cases — but rather the atmospheric conditions of the place from which 

 the bird starts on its migratory flight. 



To make the record of these two stations as intelligible as possible, it is 

 deemed best to describe the character of the country in full, and the con- 

 ditions under which the observations were made. 



The ground worked in St. Louis was the south end of the city, along the 

 west bank of the Mississippi, which is here about seventy-five to a hundred 

 feet high, and the top of which consists of a long series of sink holes or 

 shallow pits of a quarter to half an acre in extent, densely overgrown with 

 bushes and low trees. The whole southern part of St. Louis is well supplied 

 with shrubs and large trees, furnishing convenient stopping places for our 

 feathered travelers, but the greater part of the notes were made in the heavy 

 timber which skirts the banks of the River des Peres, a small stream which 

 marks the city limits on the west and then turning toward the east enters 

 the Mississippi a little way south of the city. In these woods the observer 

 was alone with Nature and the birds, and, though so near the city, yet was 

 as free from interruption and disturbance as if in the big woods of the North- 

 west. Opposite St. Louis, on the Illinois side of the river, are extensive low- 

 lands overgrown by willows and heavy underbrush. Occasional visits were 

 paid to these places, but the notes there taken have always been credited to 

 Illinois, and no notes are credited to St. Louis unless they were actually 

 made on the Missouri side of the river. The trips for observation were 



