326 General Notes. [f^^ 



Olor columbianus. Whistling Swan. — During the last sixteen years 

 I have personally examined nine Whistlfng Swans — five secured from a 

 large flock in March, 1896, near the head of Fighting Island on the Canadian 

 side of the Detroit River, one from the same locality taken in November, 

 1905, two in the city market at different times and said to have come 

 from the St. Clair Flats, and one I found dead on the shore of Sugar Island 

 November 6, 1892. 



Olor buccinator. Trumpeter Swan. — One specimen in the city 

 market in November 1893. Was taken near Wind Mill Point, Lake St. 

 Clair, according to the statement of Thomas Swan. 



Nycticorax nycticorax naevius. Black-crowned Night Heron. — 

 Though apparently rare in recent years this species was a rather common 

 sununer resident in Ecorse Township, Wayne Co., some twenty years ago 

 and abimdant at the St. Clair Flats in the early eighties. The late W. H. 

 Collins personally informed me that he visited a breeding colony on or 

 near Dickinson's Island consisting of about two hundred pairs. This was 

 in 1880, if I recollect correctly. My visit was seven years later when I 

 covered about six miles of the middle channel but failed to see a heron of 

 this species; however, I was not nearer to Dickinson's Island than two 

 miles nor along the channels where the birds were most liable to occur; 

 but Mr. Collins' statement is beyond question verified, as it is, by J. H. Lan- 

 gille in 'Our Birds in Their Haunts.' Mr. Langille speaks of dozens at a 

 time wheehng buzzard-like high above Dickinson's Island, and such a 

 movement by even a few birds could not have escaped my notice; so, in 

 all probability, the birds decreased greatly in numbers during the four 

 years between Mr. Langille 's Aisit and my o^-n. The Ecorse birds were 

 all observed on the marshes in the present village of River Rouge. They 

 were undoubtedly all members of the same colony, as they invariably left 

 the marshes in the same westerly direction, rising to a considerable height 

 and crossing the open lands well above gun shot range. They were equally 

 warj^ about the marshes, and the only explanation of their extermination 

 is wholesale slaughter on their nesting grounds. The late G. J. Wood 

 informed me they were summer residents on these marshes during his 

 thirty years of field work in the vicinity of this city. He seldom went 

 there in summer without meeting with the birds but spoke of them as pres- 

 ent in small numbers only. From his account, combined with my expe- 

 rience, I believe these herons occurred in uniform nmnbers inclusive of 1888; 

 .they then became rare and the last seen by me was an immature specimen 

 at Mr. Wood's residence in August, 1890. 



Steganopus tricolor. Wilson's Phalarope. — I do not consider this 

 species of great rarity here. In 1S91 John Parker claimed to have shot one 

 the pre\aous year on the lower Detroit River and from that time it has been 

 reported to me occasionally from the St. Clair Flats. Mr. Walter C. Wood 

 met with it there in Jvme, 1900. He was rowing a boat on one of the 

 numerous channels through the marshes on the Michigan side of the Flats 



