66 The Wilson Bulletin— No. Ill 



Mockingbird. — -By patiently waiting, September 14. 1919, after 

 having seen a puzzling bird with white wing patches disappear into 

 a swampy thicket, I was rewarded at last by seeing my first Mock- 

 ingbird in Lake County. The place was alive with Catbirds, as- 

 sembled mainly for migration, and I was kept busy turning my 

 glass here and there at every new movement. Finally I caught a 

 second glimpse, which started my identification of the bird on the 

 right track by its gray and white color and long tail, and then sud- 

 denly, right before my eyes, he sat in a leafles dead thorn bush. 

 contemplating me with a white lidded eye, and I don't know yet 

 how he ever got there so easily and unobserved after all my aleil 

 and anxious peering into the depths of the thicket. 



Surf Scoter. — It so happened that the first Scoter I ever ob- 

 served on Lake Erie is the rarest — the American Scoter; a fine ' 

 adult male, closely seen November 4, 1917. That same fall I found 

 the White-winged Scoter in numbers, and they were again observed 

 in all plumages during the fall of 1918. The Surf Scoter eluded 

 my search until October 19, 1919, when one winged by and dropped 

 onto the bay formed by a breakwater and a pier. By walking to 

 the end of the pier, while a small boy by chance headed the duck 

 in my direction by running out on the breakwater, I was able to 

 observe the bird at reasonably close range. It was in juvenile 

 plumage. The two white spots on side of head, separated by a dark 

 area, eliminated the juvenile of American Scoter, while of course 

 the absence of white wing patches put the White-winged out of the 

 question. Other details of bill and plumage also noted. 



Nelson's Sparrow. — To make a strictly satisfactory sight rec- 

 ord of the Nelson Sparrow in northern Ohio is unusual enough in 

 itself, but to make it on a breakwater one thousand feet or more 

 out in the lake is rather startling at first thought, but when I say 

 I have also found the Swamp Sparrow in the same place, and also 

 such birds as Kinglets, Wrens, Broun Creeper, several Warblers, 

 many of the Fringillidse and other land birds ~ it betters matters 

 somewhat, but still needs explaining. This breakwater extends some 

 six or seven hundred yards out into the lake. The middle third is 

 planked over and was originally intended for a wharf, but now th3 

 planking is broken and decayed and in many places whole boards 

 are missing. A filling of broken stones reaches up to within a foot 

 or two of the planks, and the land birds are attracted there to feed 

 upon the small moths and insects that abound there at times. It 

 is hard to conjecture just how a Nelson's Sparrow or a Brown 

 Creeper would know of this food supply so utterly out of their 

 usual habitat, but nevertheless there they were. I intend some day 

 to write an article on the " Bird Life of a Stone Breakwater," for 



