458 General Notes. [^^J^ 



to me, but on securing the bird found it to be a Bachman's Sparrow. It 

 was a female with two eggs at least of the litter still to be laid. Mention- 

 ing the fact to Mr. Frank N. Irving, he said that he had noticed the same 

 difference in the song of some birds that he was watching. From the differ- 

 ence in song I at once supposed that we had found Bachman's Sparrow 

 breeding here and told Mr. Irving that if he found the nest it would be an 

 arched one. The following Sunday he secured not only the nest but both 

 the parent birds. This nest and another open nest, which must undoubt- 

 edly be the Pine-woods', have been carefully photographed and the close 

 similarity of the surroundings shown. The two locations are not much 

 over a hundred yards apart. 



The pair of birds taken by Mr. Irving were submitted for e.xamination to 

 the Biological Survey in Washington and found not to differ in plumage 

 from type specimens of the Pine-woods Sparrow, which did not astonish 

 us here, as we find much difficulty in distinguishing the two among the 

 specimens that we take here. Of the dozen or so Puca'as that pass through 

 my hands yearly it seems as if the winter specimens oftenest approach the 

 Bachman type as described by Ridgway. Coues seems to be mixed on 

 the subject but I have not his 'Key' at hand to refer to. 



Now the problem before us is whether there are two Pucseas or one 

 nesting here. If one, why should it ever build an arched nest, and why, 

 when it does build an arched nest, does it sing a different song? Un- 

 fortunately I was so busily occupied during most of the nesting season 

 this year that I did not get a fair chance to settle the question beyond 

 doubt, but desire to make these observations public now so that we may 

 not lose credit for the discovery, as I did for my Bachman's and Swainson's 

 Warblers. 



In this connection let me also mention that I found the Savannah Spar- 

 row nesting at Tybee this year. It seems to have been found by Alex- 

 ander Wilson in approximately the same locality about a hundred years 

 ago. — W. J. HoxiE, Savannah, Ga. 



Nesting of Passerherbulus henslowi henslowi on Grosse Isle, 

 Michigan. — Since May, 1907, I have observed on nearly every trip afield 

 a small colony of four or five pairs of Henslow's Sparrows in a field in the 

 central part of the island. This field has been allowed to grow up into a 

 dense tangle of goldenrod, asters, pigweed, and other weed growth. Here 

 during May and June I can always hear the very characteristic se-slich' 

 calls of the males that are generally perched on some tall swaying weed- 

 stalk. I never gave the time to make a careful search for the nests, but 

 on May 31, 1909, I accidentally found one. I was passing through the 

 lowest part of the field where it borders a woodland, and is generally rather 

 wet. Here I flushed a Henslow's Sparrow from almost beneath my feet, 

 and a short search revealed the nest. This was well screened by a bunch 

 of grasses, sunk in a slight depression, and was composed of fine grasses, 

 and contained four eggs. I withdrew to a short distance to await the 



