334 Henningee, Hensloiv's Sparrow as an Ohio Bird. fj^^*^ 



HENSLOW'S SPARROW AS AN OHIO BIRD. 



BY W. F. HENNINGER. 



Plate XVIII. 



Audubon took this sparrow at Newport, Kentucky, opposite 

 Cincinnati, and states: "It i^ accidental in Ohio." It was not 

 taken in Ohio for years and Audubon's statement was considered 

 an error. But time has shown him to have been correct in this 

 statement as in many other instances, where others failed and the 

 sharp-eyed master succeeded. Dr. Wheaton, in 1882, included 

 this bird in his Ohio List on this statement of Audubon. Neither 

 he nor 01i\'er Davie knew anything of this species as an Ohio bird. 

 Their opinion that it would be found in southern and western Ohio 

 as a breeder has never been proved. In the meantime Jones 

 and Dawson were working up the northern part of the State and 

 took a specimen in 1894 near Oberlin in Lorain County, and Daw- 

 son in his book 'Birds of Ohio,' follows it up with the remark: 

 "they undoubtedly bred there." On September 25, 1906, I met 

 two migrating Henslow's Sparrows (Wilson Bull., Dec, 1906, 

 p. 136) near Tiffin, Seneca County, Ohio. In 1907 and 1908, 

 Mr. E. W. Vickers of Ellsworth Station and Geo. L. Fordyce of 

 Youngstown recorded an invasion of this sparrow in Mahoning 

 County, Ohio (Wilson Bull., Sept., 1908, pp. 150-152). 



To these records I now add two more. On October 8, 1894, 

 I took what I thought to be a specimen of this bird at South Webster, 

 Scioto County, migrating with other sparrows, and as I knew the 

 species in my home State (Missouri) I was about sure of the 

 identification. Unfortunately I lost the specimen and consequently 

 never reported anything about it as my hypothetical list of Southern 

 Ohio Birds (Wilson Bull., Sept., 1902) was already too large. In 

 1904, I took a nest and 4 eggs of this species near Tiffin, Seneca 

 County, and have kept this note back since then, piartly because 

 I wanted more evidence and a still better confirmation of my record 

 before rushing into print, and partly because I had packed the eggs 

 away where I could not conveniently get at them. Recently when 



