Freese 
160 TownsENnD, Labrador Chickadee in Migration. April 
THE LABRADOR CHICKADEE (PENTHESTES HUDSONI- 
CUS NIGRICANS) IN A SOUTHWARD MIGRATION. 
BY CHARLES W. TOWNSEND, M. D. 
In my last trip to the Labrador Peninsula, I collected in the 
forested region at the head of Shekatika Inlet, two Hudsonian 
Chickadees, whose plumage was so dusky that they seemed worthy 
of being classed as a separate race. I described them in ‘The Auk’ 
of January, 1916, under the name of Penthestes hudsonicus nigri- 
cans. In October, 1916, there began a migration of Chickadees 
of the Hudsonian species into the region about Boston that soon 
attained large proportions. I have had the opportunity of examin- 
ing eleven specimens collected in this migration, as follows: four 
taken by myself at Ipswich, one at Belmont and one at Arlington; 
one taken by Dr. W. M. Tyler at Belmont and given me; one taken 
by Mr. J. L. Peters at Harvard; one in the Museum of Compara- 
tive Zodlogy at Cambridge from Lexington, and two kindly loaned 
me by Mr. W. DeW. Miller from the American Museum of Natural 
History; one of these was taken in Staten Island, one at Plainfield, 
N. J. 
All of these eleven specimens are plainly referable to the Labrador 
subspecies, Penthestes hudsonicus nigricans and not to littoralis 
nor to true hudsonicus. It had been generally assumed that the 
race to which this unusual migration of Northern Chickadees be- 
longed was the Acadian, and it had been so reported in the Janu- 
ary, 1917, number of ‘The Auk.’ 
Here, certainly, is a curious and interesting state of affairs. A 
new race, discovered in Labrador in 1915, appearing a little over 
a year later some seven hundred miles to the south in Massachu- 
setts. It is not often that the discoverer of a new race in a distant 
land is so fortunate as to have that race return his visit! 
The migration this winter has been an unprecedentedly large 
and extensive one for any form of the species. It has extended 
throughout southern New England and reached Long Island, Staten 
Island and New Jersey.! 
1 See paper in this same issue by H. W. Wright. 
