142 



MEMOIRS OF THE NUTTALL ORNITHOLOGICAL CLUB. 



There are several other records of the occurrence of the Yellow-crowned 

 Night Heron in eastern Massachusetts, the earliest of which relates to a bird 

 obtained at Lynn by Mr. N. Vickary in October, 1862.1 



[Grusamericana (Linn.). Whooping Crane. Grus canadensis (Linn.). Little Brown 

 Crane. Grus mexicana (Miill.). Sandhill Crane. Morton, in the 'New English Canaan,' 

 s.i^'s: "Cranes, there are greate ftore, that ever inore came there at S. Davids day [March i], 

 and not before : that day they never would milTe. Thefe fometime.s eate our come, and doe pay 

 for tlieir prefumption well enough ; and ferveth there in powther, with turnips to fupply the 

 place of powthered beefe, and is a goodly bird in a difhe, and no difconimodity."' There can be 

 little doubt that this account relates chietly if not wholly to Merrymount (now Wollaston), only 

 a few miles south of the Cambridge Region, where Morton lived from 1625 to 162S and again in 

 1629 and 1630. Wood, referring probably to observations made at ' Saugus ' (now Lynn) be- 

 tween 1629 and 1633, gives equally interesting testimony, as follows: "The Crane although he 

 be almoft as tall as a man by reafon of his long legges and necke ; yet is his body rounder than 

 other fowles, not much unlike the body of a Turkie. I have feene many of thefe fowles, yet did 

 I never fee one that was fat, though uery fleekie, I fuppofe it is contrary to their nature to grow 

 f at I Of thefe there be many in Summer, but none in Winter ; their price is two fhillings."^ 

 Cranes are also mentioned by Josselyn in his ' Two Voyages.'* Our Great Blue Heron is often 

 called 'Crane' by country folk, but it does not eat corn nor is it "a goodly bird in a difhe." 

 For these reasons it could not well have been the species referred toby the writers above quoted. 

 Wood's assertion to the effect that Cranes were especially numerous "in Summer" would seem 

 to imply that they bred in eastern Massachusetts in his day, but this, although possible, is not 

 probable. 



Turning to more recent authors we find that Samuel Williams says" that the Sandhill 

 Crane, " Ardea canndcHfis^'' was among the commonest of the " Water Fo-wV found in Ver- 

 mont in 1794, and Belknap, in 1792, included* it among the birds of New Hampshire, while, even 

 as late as 1S42, Thompson asserted' that the Whooping Crane continued to be "occasionally 

 seen during its migrations " in Vermont. Emmons gives both species as rare, in his list of the 

 birds of Massachusetts, 'published in 1835, but, as he marks the Whooping Crane as breeding in 

 this State, his testimony is, perhaps, not entitled to much weight. 



From the evidence above cited we may conclude that in early Colonial times true Cranes of 

 some kind were perfectly regular and rather common migratory visitors to the region immedi- 

 ately about Boston, as well as to certain other parts of New England. That they had ceased to 

 be anything more than rare or accidental visitors before the middle of the past century, is still 

 more certain. Whether the birds which were formerly found in eastern Massachusetts were 

 Sandhill or Whooping Cranes is not clear. It is probable, however, that both species occurred 

 and that the Sandhill Crane was the more numerous of the two. Neither bird, I believe, has 



1 J. A. Allen, American Naturalist, III, 1870, 637. 



"Thomas Morton, New English Canaan, 1637, 69. Ed. C. F. Adams, Jr., 1S83, 192. 

 'William Wood, New Englands Prospect, ed. 2, 1635, 26. Charles Deane's ed., 1865, 33. 

 ' John Josselyn, Two Voyages to New-England, ed. 2, 1675, 1°°- ^ ■ Veazie's reprint, 1S65, 79. 

 'S. Williams, Natural and Civil History of Vermont, 1794, 119. 

 * J. Belknap, History of New Hampshire, III, 1792, 169. 



'Z. Thompson, History of Vermont, Natural, Civil, and Statistical, 1842, pt. i, 103. 

 ' E. Emmons, E. Hitchcock, Report on the Geology, Mineralogy, Botany, and Zoology of 

 Massachusetts, 1835, 532. 



