260 MEMOIRS OF THE NUTTALL ORNITHOLOGICAL CLUB. 



is most interesting. In July, 1884, in The Auk, the following note was pub- 

 lished by Mr. Robert Ridgway : " The National Museum possesses a consider- 

 able series of eggs labelled 'P. savanna, Sable Island, Nova Scotia, July, 1862 ; 

 J. P. Dodd ' which are uniformly so much larger than those of the Savannah 

 Sparrow as to strongly suggest the probability that they may be in reality those 

 of the Ipswich Sparrow. At any rate the matter is worth investigating, and it 

 is hoped that some reader of 'The Auk' may be able to decide the question." 

 Dr. C. H. Merriam in the October Auk states: "Acting upon the above sug- 

 gestion I immediately wrote to the Rev. W. A. Des-Brisay, a resident missionary 

 of Sable Island, requesting him to send me a specimen of the common ' Gray 

 Bird ' of the Island. This he was kind enough to do, and the specimen, in con- 

 firmation of Mr. Ridgway's suspicion, proves to be an unquestionable Ipswich 

 Sparrow." 



But it was not until May, 1894, that the matter was definitely settled by 

 the visit of Dr. Jonathan Dwight, Jr.. to Sable Island. Here he found the 

 bird breeding, discovered some nine or ten nests, and made many interesting 

 observations. All of this together with an exhaustive history of the bird and 

 a colored plate is contained in the second memoir of the Nuttall Ornithological 

 Club, entitled : The Ipswich Sparrow and its Summer Home, by Jonathan 

 Dwight, Jr., M. D., published by the Club in August, 1895. A search by Dr. 

 Dwight and others on the sandy portions of the Magdalen Islands, on Prince 

 Edward's Island, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick has failed to find the Ipswich 

 Sparrow breeding. "Hence," as Dr. Dwight says, "it becomes extremely prob- 

 able that the Ipswich Sparrow is an island species, confined to Sable Island, 

 where it has made its home perhaps for centuries." Dr. Dwight found that the 

 Ipswich Sparrow is resident on Sable Island the whole year round, and that 

 it is the only land bird that makes its nest there, being known as the " Gray 

 Bird " to the few inhabitants. 



Sable Island lies nearly one hundred miles from the Nova Scotia coast and 

 consists of " a scant twenty miles of rolling sand-hills .... some of the sand 

 mountains attaining an elevation of eighty feet and resembling in almost every 

 particular save greater size the stretches of sand dunes to be found along our 

 Atlantic sea-board, — the same treeless aspect, the same sparse covering of 

 coarse beach-grass, the same deserts of shifting white sand." ] 



In general, the Ipswich Sparrow has been found along our Atlantic coast 

 during the colder part of the year from Sable Island and New Brunswick south- 

 ward. The most southerly records are from Georgia, from which State three 

 have been taken, the most southern from Cumberland Island, and curiously 



l Jno. Dwight, Jr.: Memoirs Nuttall Orn. Club, no. 2, p. 9, 1895. 



