THE AUK: 



A QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF 



ORNITHOLOGY. 



VOL. XVIII. October, 1901. No. 4. 



J/ 



AN ORNITHOLOGICAL MYSTERY 



BY WILLIAM BREWSTER. 



"Even yet thou art to me 

 No bird : but an invisible Thing, 

 A Voice, a mystery." — Wordsxvorth. 



In these clays of multitudinous bird observers, when so many of 

 the questions that both perplexed and stimulated the students of 

 twentj'-five or thirty years ago have been set finally at rest, it is 

 refreshing to happen on an ornithological mystery ; one, more- 

 over, possessing no slight interest and importance since it 

 concerns a bird which is known to the ornithologists of eastern 

 Massachusetts, as the Cuckoo was to Wordsworth, only by its 

 voice. 



At about six o'clock on the afternoon of June 7, 1889, I heard 

 in Cambridge, among the dense beds of cat-tail flags which sur- 

 round Pout Pond, some bird notes, rail-like in character but 

 wholly new to me. They proved equally so to Mr. Walter Faxon 

 and Mr. Bradford Torrey, whom I took to the place later that same 

 evening. Together we listened to the bird for upward of an hour 

 during which he was rarely silent for more than a minute or two at 

 a time. As we were unable to obtain any clue to his identity, and 

 as his song invariably began with a series of kick-kicks we chris- 

 tened him the ' Kicker ' by which name he has since been known 

 among the Cambridge ornithologists. 



