PREFACE. 



At the solicitation of many of my ornithological friends this 

 work was begun more than five years ago, but for various reasons 

 its completion has been retarded. It was originally intended to 

 treat only the birds of the coast region, to which the gi-eater part 

 of my field work has been confined. In compliance w'ith a re- 

 quest from Mr. Leverett Mills Loomis, however, I have added an 

 annotated list of additional species of the Piedmont and Alpine 

 regions, which are not found in the coast region. This is printed 

 next in order after the coast list. 



The scientific names used in this work are those adopted by the 

 committee on nomenclature of the American Ornithologists' 

 Union, up to and including the fifteenth supplement to the Check- 

 List. With few exceptions, the nests and eggs of birds which 

 breed in the coast region are described, all measurements being 

 in EngUsh inches and hundredths, but no attempt has been made 

 to give full fife histories. In fact, the account of nearly every 

 species is abridged as much as possible. 



Df . ElHott Coues ' Synopsis of the Birds of South CaroUna ^ is 

 unfortunately so fuU of errors that I have placed many of his 

 species in the hypothetical fist, since they are based on purely 

 hypothetical grounds in my opinion, and in the opinion of many 

 of my ornithological friends. In the cases of the Yellow-bellied 

 Flycatcher, Tree Sparrow, Warbling Vireo, Nashville Warbler, 

 and Mourning Warbler, Dr. Glover M. Allen searched the collect- 

 ion of the Boston Society of Natural History, and Professor Wells 

 W. Cooke examined the collections of the Smithsonian Institu- 

 tion, but neither was able to find specimens which might have 

 been taken by Dr. Coues, and the accession lists did not show 

 that any were ever received. Neither Mr. Loomis nor I have 

 ever met with these species in South Carolina. 



Although Mr. Loomis was the fii'st person to report the occur- 

 rence of the Prairie Horned Lark in the State, I have not cred- 

 ited this form to the list of birds added to the fauna by him, 

 since the birds recorded by Dr. Elliott Coues' in 1868 were un- 



» Proc. Bost. Soc. Nat. Hist., XII, 104-127. » Ibid, 114. 



