280 NOTES ON THE 



STIIRNELLA MAGNA NEGLECTA (Audubon). (501&.) 

 WESTERN MEADOW LARK. 



This species has been occasionally obtained in the Red river 

 valley for the last fifteen years, but is still rare. It has been 

 collected as far down as the Indian Reserve in Pipestone 

 county. I am very familiar with this bird, and its various 

 modifications of song as exhibited in the mountains, foot hills 

 and valleys of California where I spent about two years in the 

 enjoyment of special facilities for observing them, as I was 

 making a collection of the birds from Trucker to Sonoma and 

 south to San Diego in 1871-2. 



SPECIFIC CHARA.CTERS. 



Feathers above dark brown, margined with brownish-white, 

 with a terminal blotch of pale reddish-brown; exposed portion 

 of wings and tail with transverse bands, which in the latter 

 are completely isolated from each other, narrow and linear; 

 beneath yellow, with a black pectoral crescent; yellow of the 

 throat extending on the sides of the maxilla; sides, crissum, 

 and tibia, very pale reddish-brown, or nearly white, streaked 

 with blackish; head with a light median, and superciliary 

 stripe, the latter yellow in front of the eye, a blackish line 

 behind it; the transverse bars on the feathers above (less so 

 on the tail) with a tendency to become confluent near the 

 exterior margin. 



Length, 10; wing, 5.25; tail, 3.25; bill, 1.25. 



Habitat, western United States from Wisconsin, Minnesota, 

 Iowa to Pacific coast. 



ICTERUS SPURIUS (L.). (506.) 

 ORCHARD ORIOLE. 



This is a fairly common summer resident, arriving about the 

 middle of May and retiring southward about the first of Sep- 

 tember. Its song is clear, strong and thrush-like in melody. 



The nests are usually constructed and incubation commenced 

 by the second week in June, and occasionally a little earlier. 

 The structure consists of green or nearly fresh wiry grasses 

 compactly woven and lined with finer grasses, inner bark of 

 coarse weeds and coarse hairs of cattle and horses. It is 

 usually suspended from a fork in a limb from seven to ten or 

 twelve feet from the ground. In the absence of the orchards, 

 from which it has received its common name in the east and 

 south, it seems to prefer a low tree of almost any species of 

 timber if somewhere about the size of a matured apple tree 

 and located on a somewhat elevated, dry sidehill with no rela- 

 tion to approximate water. 



