Todd : Ornithology of Bahama Islands. 415 



Both are apparently immature birds, with the plumage rather worn 

 and faded, showing no traces of paler feather-edgings, but as yet no 

 indications of prenuptial moult. 

 22. Octhodromus' wilsonius wilsonius (Ord). 



Three ^pi-ciineiis: Waitings Island. 



These specimens (all males) exhibit a very decided suffusion of rusty 

 ochre on the nape and sides of the head, so pronounced, indeed, as to 

 have rendered further comparisons desirable in order to ascertain 

 their status. Examination of a considerable series from various 

 United States localities discloses the fact that a certain proportion 

 of the indi\ iduals show this coloration, supposed to be characteristic of 

 0. -u: rufiniicha (Ridgway), to a greater or less extent. Indeed, the 

 type of this form, which has been examined in this connection, is 

 no more rufescent than many of the northern specimens, and in my 

 opinion is nothing more than a migrant from the north. Xo un- 

 questioned resident birds from Jamaica (the type locality of rufinucha) 

 have been seen, but Mr. Hellmayr {Abhandliingen der K. Bayer. 

 Akademie der Wissenschafteti, XXII, 1906, 715) states that birds 

 from Jamaica and Trinidad agree in being readily distinguishable 

 from true li'ilsoniiis, and a series from the Dutch West Indies in the 

 Field Museum which I have studied bears out this conclusion. 

 The differential characters of the two forms stand out more 

 clearly in the female sex, in which the sides of the head 

 and the pectoral collar are much more rusty in the series in question 

 than in any of the United States examples, but the alleged difference 

 in the color of the lores does not hold good. But whether the name 

 rufinucha can properly be applied to this form is open to question, as 

 I have already intimated. The matter is complicated by our lack of 

 precise knowledge regarding the winter range of the two forms (cf. 

 Cooke, Bulletin Biological Survey, Xo. 35, 1910, 93, 94). Mr. Hell- 

 mayr, in the paper before referred to, insists that the type of Chara- 

 drius crassirostris Spix belongs to the northern form — a conclusion in 

 my judgment open to grave doubt, if for no other reason than the un- 

 likelihood of ■u.'ilsonius ever migrating so far south in winter as Brazil. 



* Mr. Oregon.- M. Mathews, in two recent papers published in the Xovitates 

 Zoologica, proposes a large number of changes in generic terms, Eupoda, for ex- 

 ample, replacing Oclhodromtis. Several other names used in the present paper are 

 also affected, but pending the verification of the proposed chjmges none of them 

 are formally adopted here. 



