INTRODUCTION. 



^T THIIyE the immense strides taken l)y American ornithol- 

 ogy during the past score of years has seriously taxed 

 the energies of the amateur to keep within hailing distance, 

 and despite the volume of notes annually published in the va- 

 rious periodicals and books, the demand for complete life his- 

 tories of even our most familiar birds have not lessened to any 

 great extent. The life of one person would prove far too short 

 to attempt a thorough study of a single species in all its char- 

 acteristics ; hence the absolute necessity' for the co-operative 

 work advocated and practiced by the Wilson Ornithological 

 Chapter to obtain results at all satisfactory. 



In spite of the devotion of the leisure moments of five 3'ears 

 and the generous aid of a large corps of enthusiasts, the frank 

 acknowledgment that the succeeding pages do faint justice to 

 the subject of this paper, is not a matter of discouragement. 

 Nature's Book will always contain fresh and delightful pages 

 for the curious and obser\^ant. 



Few have any idea of the magnitude of the literature under 

 the title of a single name, and the unavailabilit}' of much of it 

 for a work of this kind, because of its fragmentary or negative 

 nature. A realization of the latter has caused the writer to 

 go to the other extreme in frequent cases, with the hope that 

 the mass of detailed information, while it may detract from the 

 general appearance of the paper, will prove useful timber for 

 a more competent builder, or of value for reference. 



As far as it was practicable to do so, the compiler has con- 

 scientiously striven to place the credit of observations where it 

 belongs, and the quotation marks are u.sed when the exact lan- 

 guage is extracted from publications. 



All notes have been taken under the name that' has held 

 good for almost a century and a half. This, combined with the 

 impossibility of the average student positively identifying any 

 but the extreme types of the subdivided species, has necessi- 



