470 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1913. 



decided to carry the cause before the Congress of the American 

 Ornithologists' Union at Cambridge, Mass., in November. There 

 it met with favor and the demand by members of the union for bands 

 became so pronounced that 5,000 were issued prior to the close of 

 the nesting period of 1909. Of this nimiber approximately 1,000 

 were actually jDlaced on birds, and there resulted from these about 30 

 return records by the end of the year. With interest aroused, the 

 time seemed ripe to give the movement a more concrete form than 

 it had hitherto assumed, the result being that some 30 members of 

 the American Ornithologists' Union assembled in New York on the 

 evening of December 8, 1909, and organized the American Bird 

 Banding Association. 



Dr. Leon J. Cole, who had been so successfully pushing the work, 

 was chosen president, and together with four able colleagues made 

 up the executive committee. In the spring of 1910, however. Dr. 

 Cole was permanently called to Madison, Wis., and partly as a 

 result of his absence, and also on account of the pressing business 

 affairs of all members of the committee and their widely separated 

 places of residence, the activities of the association were destined to 

 meet with a serious setback. Practically nothing was accomplished 

 during 1910 nor in 1911, but in the fall of the latter year the Lin- 

 naean Society of New York offered to foster the work, much to the 

 relief of those previously encumbered with it. A committee (con- 

 sisting at first of three and subsequently of five) was appointed and 

 a campaign to raise funds in preparation for the nesting season of 

 1912 was inaugurated and carried forward with considerable success. 



At the outset a change in the type of bands seemed advisable and 

 after inquiring among as many as six different European bird band- 

 ing organizations the style used by Country Life, London, was 

 adopted. Seven thousand five hundred of these bands, of eight dif- 

 ferent sizes and bearing the inscription " Notif}' Am. Museum, 

 N. Y.," instead of " Notify The Auk, N. Y.," were ordered. For the 

 purpose of keei^ing an exact record of every band issued a special 

 ledger was designed and a filing cabinet for record cards and cor- 

 respondence was purchased. As the spring of 1912 approached 

 post cards were sent out requesting that applications for bands be sub- 

 mitted. So vigorous was the response resulting from these cards 

 and from notices in The Auk, Bird-Lore, Country Life in America, 

 and elsewhere, that 4,173 bands were distributed among 44 persons 

 residing in various parts of the country, and representing such 

 widely separated territories as Nova Scotia, Montana, and Florida. 

 All told, 800 of the bands issued this year (1912) have been actually 

 placed on birds, and some of these have already yielded return 

 records possessing a high degree of interest. The total number of 



