Exit the Dickcissel— A Remarkable Case of Local 

 Extinction 



BY SAMUEL N. RHOADS. 



The Black-throated Bunting, or Dickcissel, of the Atlantic 

 coast plain, is a bird of the past. This fact has been emphasized 

 by the experience of the last fifteen years. In that period per- 

 haps a dozen stragglers have been seen or shot in the extensive 

 regions reaching from South Carolina to Maine and from the 

 eastern foothills of the Alleghanies to the Atlantic coast. This 

 large area was, in favored spots, especially in the lowlands, 

 meadows and valley bottoms of the tidal plain, the breeding 

 ground of thousands of this species in the days of Wilson, 

 Audubon, Nuttall, Cassin, Woodhouse and Baird. Even up to 

 near the days when John Krider was preparing his "Forty 

 Years' Notes of a Field Ornithologist," in the year 1879, the 

 once familiar bird lingered in its Philadelphia county haunts. 

 My own first rambles as a full-fledged bird collector in the 

 vicinity of Frankford, Philadelphia, in the years 1877 to 1880, 

 with my friend W. L. Collins, revealed a remnant of the Dick- 

 cissel host yet breeding in certain grass and grain fields border- 

 ing the old Bustleton turnpike and Castor road a mile outside 

 of Frankford. Two or three fields in that immediate vicinity 

 on the Levick, Shallcross and Comly farms, were the only spots 

 known to me in the whole circle surrounding Philadelphia at 

 that distance, or indeed anywhere in Pennsylvania and New 

 Jersey, where the bird could be taken. 



In short, I made the acquaintance of the Black-throated 

 Bunting only three or four years before its final disappearance 

 as a regular summer visitant in Pennsylvania. This fact is con- 

 firmed by the list of records accompanying this article, which 

 shows the bird's status in this and other counties of the State 

 and in New Jersey. 



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