3 IO General Notes. [^ 



GENERAL NOTES. 



The Dovekie on the Coast of North Carolina. — I wish to record the 

 capture of a male Dovekie (Alle alle) January 20, 1905, on the beach of 

 the Currituck Shooting Club, N. C, half a mile south of the Life Saving 

 Station. The bird was picked up alive. It only lived a day. It was sent 

 to me in the flesh by a member of the Club and is now in my collection. 

 — John E. Thayer, Lancaster, ATass. 



The Golden Eagle {Aquila chrysactos) near Ottawa. — A bird of the 

 vear of this species was given to me, which had been caught in a trap set 

 for otter or muskrats near High Falls, Wright Co., Quebec, forty miles 

 northeast of Ottawa. It measured 77 inches from tip to tip. This spe- 

 cies has not been reported from this vicinity for years. The Bald Eagle 

 is a little more frequent. — C. W. G. Eikrig, Ottawa, Ont. 



The Genus Conurus in the West Indies. — The distribution of the 

 genus Conurus in the West Indies is worthy of notice. In the Greater 

 Antilles it is found on Jamaica, Cuba, Haiti, Porto Rico, and St. Thomas. 

 It was formerly found (C. euops) on the Isle of Pines, but there are no 

 records of its occurrence on islands other than those mentioned, although 

 Amazona is found on Grand Cayman and in the Bahamas. All the spe- 

 cies to which we have reference in literature have survived to the present 

 day. One extra-limital species of parrakeet, Brotogerys tut, has been 

 credited to these islands, the mistake apparently having been first made 

 in the Planches Enlumindes (No. 456, fig. 1, " La Petite Perruche de I'lsle 

 St. Thomas "= B. tui). In the Lesser Antilles parrakeets are now every- 

 where extinct, but we have good evidence that they formerly existed on 

 Guadeloupe, Dominica, Martinique, and Barbados. Here, as in the 

 Greater Antilles, their distribution was apparently erratic ; Barbados, 

 with no other genus of Psittacidre, corresponds to St. Thomas, while St. 

 Lucia and St. Vincent, each with an Amazona, resemble Grand Cayman 

 and the Bahamas. It is difficult to understand why some of the other 

 islands, such as St. Kitts, Nevis, Antigua, St. Vincent, and Grenada, but 

 more especially Tobago and Trinidad, have never, so far as known, had 

 as a resident any species of Conurus. 



The parrakeet, unfortunately, appears to have been too small to attract 

 the attention of the earlier writers, and we therefore find the references 

 brief and unsatisfactory. Dutertre (Hist. gen. des Isles des Christophie, 

 de la Guadeloupe, etc., p. 299, 1654; Hist. gen. des Antilles habitees par 

 les Francois, II, p. 251, 1667), de Rochefort (Hist, nat et morale des Isles 

 Antilles, p. 157, 1658 ; p. 175, 1665), and Labat (Nouv. voyage aux Isles 

 de l'Amerique, II, p. 218, 1742) all mention them and give good accounts 

 of their habits and characteristics, but in no case give enough description 

 to enable us to identify the species to which the birds belonged. The 



