V °'i 9™*] General Notes. 101 



extensive territory but I find more records for Illinois than in previous 

 years. I have examined twenty-eight specimens so far (Dec. 9) received 

 by two of our Chicago taxidermists, the earliest record being Oct. 31. 

 Some of these specimens came from Cook and Lake Counties, 111., Iron- 

 wood, Mich., and from a few localities in Wisconsin. On Nov. 17 I saw 

 a specimen on the "Skokie" marsh, near Highland Park, 111. After fly- 

 ing a few hundred yards, it alighted on the top of a large haycock where it 

 remained for an hour. In Maine several have been taken near Bangor, 

 and five were sent in to Portland Nov. 14, all taken on Richmond Island, 

 off Scarborough Beach. Mr. M. Abbott Frazar of Boston, writes me 

 under date of Dec. 2, that his establishment had received about twenty 

 specimens, the earliest date being about Nov. 20. They came from dif- 

 ferent localities on Cape Cod. Mr. H. S. Hathaway of Providence, R. I., 

 reports five as taken in that State on Nov. 16 and 18. About two thirds 

 of the owls which I have examined were large dark females. Some of the 

 males were in fairly light plumage, but none approached the pure white 

 dress in which they are sometimes found. — Ruthven Deane, Chicago, III. 



The Downy Woodpecker. — For more than a year past a Downy 

 Woodpecker (Dryobates pubescens) has made his home in the backyard 

 of the house where I live. He was induced to stay last winter by a piece 

 of fat meat which was nailed to one of the trees. In the early winter he 

 drilled a hole in a dead cherry limb about six feet from the ground, and I 

 believe used it all winter as a night refuge. During the past summer it 

 was used occasionally by the same bird, though not with any regularity. 

 About sunset he flies into the hole, which is only four inches deep, and 

 sits there with his head out watching the surroundings until dark. The 

 hole is only about twenty feet away from a back porch of the house that 

 is in constant use, and the bird does not seem to be annoyed by his prox- 

 imity to the persons sitting there. 



On my walks through the woods this fall I have noticed a number of 

 newly drilled holes in dead stumps which look as if they had been made by 

 the woodpeckers for winter refuges. This is a habit of the bird which does 

 not seem to have been noted in the natural histories. — R. P. Sharples, 

 West Chester, Pa. 



Breeding of the Prairie Horned Lark in Eastern Massachusetts. — 

 As a supplement to Dr. C. W. Townsend's note on the discovery in Au- 

 gust, 1903, of young Otocoris alpestris praticola at Ipswich, Mass., where 

 they had undoubtedly been bred (Auk, XXI, p. 81, Jan., 1904), it may 

 be worth while to record that on Sept. 4, 1905, I obtained two birds of 

 this subspecies, shot in my presence by a gunner (who mistook them for 

 plover!) "out of three which were flitting about a stony beach and a grassy 

 hillside at Ipswich. One of these birds is apparently an adult, but the 

 other is a young bird in juvenal plumage just moulting into the first 



