BIRDS OF THE CAMBRIDGE REGION. I41 



49. Nyctanassa violacea (Linn.). 

 Yellow-crowned Night Heron. 



Accidental visitor. 



A Yellow-crowned Night Heron was shot on July 30, 1878, in a rather 

 densely populated part of Somerville ' within a few hundred yards of the line 

 which separates that city from Cambridge and not far from Norton's Woods. 

 The facts attending its capture were as follows : On the afternoon of the day 

 just mentioned Mr. George Cunningham was attracted by a commotion among 

 the Robins and other small birds in the orchard immediately behind his house. 

 On going to the spot he disturbed a large bird which flew from an apple tree 

 and disappeared over an adjoining fence. Shortly afterwards there was another 

 alarm in the orchard and it was found that the intruder had returned. A neigh- 

 bor who was fond of shooting was summoned, the bird was winged and, after a 

 sharp chase, captured. It showed fight, and " chattered," as Mr. Cunningham 

 expressed it, "very like a monkey." The specimen was mounted by Mr. 

 Charles I. Goodale, a well-known Boston ta.xidermist of that period. I after- 

 wards obtained it from Mr. Cunningham and it is still in my collection.^ It is a 

 young bird in the spotted autumn plumage, many of the feathers of which 

 retain the hair-like filaments that characterize the downy stage of young 

 Herons, and are pushed outward on the tips of the feathers which succeed the 

 down. Nevertheless it was old enough to have flown a considerable distance, 

 perhaps even from some breeding ground in the South Atlantic States. 



Mr. John A. Farley tells me that in 1893 a pair of Yellow-crowned Night 

 Herons were seen during the early part of the breeding season (he thinks in 

 June) about the old Maiden reservoir ("then a small pond") near the dividing 

 line between Maiden and Medford. One of them was shot and is now in the 

 possession of Mr. O. D. Flood, formerly of Maiden, now of Leominster. This 

 bird, no doubt, is the specimen briefly referred to by Messrs. Howe and Allen 

 in their Massachusetts list as killed in Maiden about 1893.^ The locality where 

 it was taken lies outside the Cambridge Region, but only a few miles from its 

 eastern borders. 



' W. Brewster, Bulletin of the Nuttall Ornithological Club, IV, 1879, 124-125. 



'•^ No. 401 , collection of William Brewster. 



^ R. H. Howe, Jr., and G. M. Allen, Birds of Massachusetts, 1901, 46. 



