iS;;-! Correspondence. ^g 



In looking at a case of his birds this specimen at once attracted niv 

 attention as a strange looking Tanager. different from any I remembered 

 to have seen, and on inquiry I learned its history, as above given. 



As far as I can learn this is a bird new to California, and also to the 

 United States. If so it seems worthy of record. (No. 2697, J, Coll. of W. 

 E. B.) 



In 1SS4 I took east with me a specimen of Tringa fuscicollis; it \v;b so 

 named by some good authority, Mr. Ridgway I think. By the A. O. U. 

 Check List it appears that it has not been found in California. It was a 

 solitary individual, shot by myself on the marsh near Oakland, Cal. No. 

 10S0. §, Oct. S, 1883. Iris dark brown, feet and legs yellow. Coll. of 

 W. E. B. — Walter E. Bryant. Oakland, Cal. 



CORRESPONDENCE. 



[Correspondents are requested to torite briefly and to the point. Xo attention anil 

 be paid to anonymous communications^ 



Scarcity of Adult Birds in Autumn. 



To the Editors of the Auk : — 



Sirs: Between the first of September and the twenty-second of Novem- 

 ber of this vear I collected 367 bird skins; 25S during the month of 

 October in Colorado, and the remainder in Kentucky. Of this aggregate 

 of 367, 348 were birds of the year. The question at once presents itself, 

 whence this glaring discrepancy? Where were the adult birds.- I made 

 no effort to secure young birds (in nine cases out of ten the young fall 

 bird is indistinguishable from the adults by external characters), but 

 'took them as they came.' It may be asked how I determined the birds 

 in question to be 'birds of the year.' For several years I have noted that 

 nearly all the birds shot by me in the fall had skulls that were more or 

 less incompletely ossified, and in 1SS5 I began to systematically examine 

 the skulls and other skeletal parts with the view of determining the 

 relative age of the birds, assuming that those individuals exhibiting a 

 soft or incompletely ossified skull, must have been hatched dining the 

 immediately preceding breeding season. 



Of the nineteen adult birds collected between the dates above, given. 

 eleven of them were species resident where collected. 



Apparently the only legitimate inference from the above facts is, assum- 

 ing my method of determining the relative age of birds correct, that 

 the adults migrate as soon as they are relieved of the care of the young 

 birds, and that the latter form the great bulk of the autumnal migration 

 stream. Opposed to this theory we have the negative evidence that ejv' 



