Widmann — A Preliminary Catalog of the Birds of Missouri. 157 



The new game law of 1905 protects the species, and it is our hope 

 that this will have a beneficial effect, as the number of summer 

 residents and transients has been greatly reduced. The first 

 Meadowlarks return to Missouri with great regularity during the 

 first week of March, exceptionally in February or in the second 

 week of March ; the bulk comes betvNreen the 10th and the 18th, 

 exceptionally later, as March 31, 1900. Troops of transients 

 are with us until the last week in April and again from the last 

 week of September to the last week of October. After quail 

 shooting begins November 1, Meadowlarks get scarce, and by 

 the end of the month only winter numbers, i. e., very few, are left. 



*501b. Sturnella magna neglecta (Aud.). Western Meadow- 

 lark. 



Sturnella neglecta. Sturnella ludoviciana. 



Geog. Dist. — ^Western United States, southwestern British 

 Provinces and northwestern Mexico; east to Manitoba, Minne- 

 sota, Wisconsin, Iowa, northern Missouri, Indian Territory and 

 Texas. 



The prairie region of Missouri is undoubtedly one of the best 

 fields for the study of the relationship of the two forms of Sturnella, 

 magna and magna neglecta. The true Eastern Meadowlark 

 occurs throughout southern Missouri to the exclusion of the 

 true Western except in migration, when typical neglecta are 

 regular transient visitants along our western border. Typical 

 Eastern Meadowlarks occur as summer residents throughout 

 northern Missouri except the northwest corner, where, in the 

 region of Langdon, Atchison Co., only tpyical Western were ob- 

 served in June 1906. Together with the true Eastern, true West- 

 ern breed in Nodaway Co., the next county east of Atchison 

 Co. Mr. B. M. Stigall of Kansas City, who became acquainted 

 with the Western in Colorado, writes that during June and July 

 1906, which he spent at Maryville, Nodaway Co., Mo., he heard 

 both, magna and neglecta, singing in the same field. How 

 far eastward the true Western is found breeding has not been 

 determined, but, together with the true Eastern Meadowlark, 

 forms occur which cannot properly be placed with either one of 

 the subspecies because intermediate. They are found as far 

 east as the counties bordering the Mississippi and as far south 

 as Montgomery and St. Charles counties. The typical Western 

 rarely straggles as far east as St. Louis Co. w^here it was only 



