Vol. Xin General Notes. 389 



1895 



The Passenger Pigeon in the Upper Mississippi Valley. — While col- 

 lecting with Mr. Wallace Craig, Sept. 3, 1891, I .shot a male Wild Pigeon 

 {Ecfopistes migratorius) in an oak grove in Chicago, near 75th Street, 

 between Stony Island Avenue and Lake Michigan. It was feeding and 

 flew up ft our approach, alighting perhaps ten feet from the ground, 

 where I shot it. It was not at all wild, and was a bird of the year. We 

 saw two others in the same grove, but did not secure them. 



April 8, 1894, Mr. Edw. J. Gekler saw a flock of about fifteen Wild 

 Pigeons flying while in a woods near Liverpool, Indiana. 



Mr. Kaempher, a taxidermist of this city, had a fine male Passenger 

 Pigeon mounted on one of his shelves which was brought in on March 

 14!^ 1894. The gentleman who brought it said he shot it near Liverpool, 

 Indiana, and saw quite a number of them at the time. 



Mr. W. C. Stryker, of Berrien County, Mich., now a student in the 

 Chicago College of Dental Surgery, told me that on May 27, 1894, he 

 found a flock of perhaps twenty Wild Pigeons in a clover field on his 

 farm near some burr oaks into which they flew when he frightened them. 

 Thev remained on his place for some time and were not molested. His 

 farm is but three or four miles from the Indiana line. He is very familiar 

 with the Passenger Pigeon, having shot many several years ago when 

 thev were abundant. —James O. Dunn, Chicago, III. 



A Large Brood of Ospreys.— A pair of Ospreys {Patidioii haliaetus 

 carolinensis) that build on one of the pole nests in Bristol, R. I. (see 

 'Auk,' Vol. XII, No. 3, p. 300), raised last spring (1895) a brood of 

 seven voung. On the nth of June two of the nestlings, about the size 

 of squabs, were picked up dead under the nest and on the twenty-sixth 

 of the same month another young bird was also found dead at the foot 

 of the pole. In the latter part of July the nest contained four almost 

 fully fledged young. This is the largest brood of Ospreys I have ever 

 heard of being raised in a season, and from all appearances the seven 

 eggs must have been laid in seven or eight days. — Ricginald Heber 

 Howe, Jr., Brookliiie, Mass. 



On the Correct Subspecific Names of the Texan and Mexican Screech 

 Owls.— A recent careful examination of the subject has convinced me that, 

 as Messrs. Sclater and Salvin have several times insisted. Scops trichopsis 

 of Wagler is the bird afterward described by Cassin as Scops mccallii and 

 subsequently by Lawrence as 5. enano, and not the form from Arizona 

 and parts of northern and central Mexico, to which the name has recently 

 been applied by American ornithologists. Kaup's detailed description 

 in the Transactions of the Zoological Society of London, Vol. \\\ 1862, 

 pp. 227-228. taken from Wagler's type, I think settles this question beyond 

 a doubt. Scops mccallii Cassin is therefore a synonym of 5. trichopsis 

 Wagler, and No. 373 b. of the A. O. U. Check-List becomes Megascops 

 ASK) TRICHOPSIS (Wagler). No. 373/, not being Wagler's bird, must 



