396 



General Notes. \^^ 



But to me most interesting of all was a sight I had never before wit- 

 nessed on the beach, although I had visited it every day ; — as far as the 

 eye could reach, up and down the line of surf, were great numbers of 

 boobies flying back and forth and every now and then collecting over 

 some school of small fish and diving from a height like a party of boys 

 following each other off a spring-board. There were hundreds, perhaps 

 thousands, of them. There were probably but two species, though of 

 three styles of coloration. A comparatively small number were adults of 

 the Common Booby (Sulasula), easily identified by their brown backs and 

 heads and white bellies; next in numbers wei'C young birds in wholly 

 grayish brown plumage, but outnumbering both these together was a 

 small white species with conspicuous blackish flight feathers. All these 

 were of about one size. 



For two hours I lay flat on the beach hoping to get a shot, but though 

 the boobies came often to within a hundred yards of me and sometimes 

 gathered together and fished in front of where I lay, none came quite 

 close enough to shoot, keeping just outside the breakers. At the end of 

 this time they began gradually, in small parties, to fly out to sea, till all 

 had gone. From the way these birds behaved I do not think they were 

 driven in by stress of weather, because all the time they were off the beach 

 they were very busy fishing, and when they had done they gradually left 

 again flying out to sea though the storm had not abated. It is mj' opin- 

 ion, rather, that the boobies know by experience that during such a storm 

 there is good fishing on the east Florida beach and come there to enjoy it. 



While such records as this, where the species are not positively identi- 

 fied by the taking of specimens, are unsatisfactory in the extreme, yet 

 this one, perhaps, is worth publishing as showing that the smaller 

 boobies do sometimes visit the coast of east Florida in large numbers. 

 Moreover, I am sure the white bird was Sula piscator ; had it been S. 

 cyanops I could not have failed to notice the larger size compared with 

 the Comm.on Booby, as I often saw them directly side by side. — Outram 

 Bangs, Boston., Mass. 



Ardea caerulea again seen in Ohio. — On July 2, 1902, a beautiful speci- 

 men of this species was again seen along the canal (Portsmouth-Lake 

 Erie Canal) near Waverly ; it was so unsuspicious, that it allowed bug- 

 gies to pass within a distance of twenty feet and a mistake in identifica- 

 tion was excluded. As I had to move north a few days later, I could not 

 observe the species any length of time. The early date this year seems 

 to strengthen the opinion expressed last year, that this bird may breed in 

 southern Ohio. — W. F. Henninger, Waverly, Ohio. 



The Yellow-crowned Night Heron (^Nycticora:< violaceus') in Nova 

 Scotia. — It may be of interest to report that on Tuesday, April i, 1902, 

 while walking through the Qt^iincy Market in Boston, I found in the 



