Vol.xn General Notes. 367 



1893 J 



to go with me. We arrived there quite early and saw a flock of about twenty 

 of "the birds I was after; they were feeding on the rice in company with 

 Bobolinks and Red-winged Blackbirds. We found them very wild and 

 it was impossible to get a shot. The men who mind the rice told me they 

 sometimes killed a few and they saw some every year in these fields. I 

 went to the house of a negro who had killed some the day betore, to see 

 if I could get any, but found they had all been used for food. I saw, how- 

 ever, the heads, wings and feathers of several specimens and think 

 undoubtedly that the birds are the same as the one brought me by John 

 Goffney on May 17 of last year, that is, it is an Oriole I do not know. 



-On showing the specimen killed on June 3, 1893, to Mr. Allen Mehle 

 on the 14th of the same month, he told me that a flock of about two hun- 

 dred of these birds came to his place at Mississippi City, Miss., in July, 

 1892, and remained there for some time. Numbers of them were killed 

 and several were sent to a taxidermist in New Orleans, but he did not 

 know his name. He is positive it is the same bird, and as no one knew 

 what they were, he had some mounted." 



In his letter of Sept. 12, 1893, Mr. Mcllhenny writes me also as follows : 

 "I showed the skin, before I sent it to you, to Captain Jim Hare of the 

 Trinity Shoal lightship, and he told me that two birds of exactly the same 

 appearance had struck the light and had been killed this spring in April. 

 His ship is sixty miles out to sea and due south of here. Capt. Hare tells 

 me that he often sees huge flocks of small birds flying high in the air dur- 

 ing their migrations." 



From the foregoing it will be seen that this Oriole cannot be regarded 

 as simply a straggler, and it is only surprising that it has been over- 

 looked so long.— Charles E. Bendire, Washington, D. C. 



Behavior of a Summer Tanager.— I send the following item which my 

 friend, Rev. Boniface Verheyen, of St. Benedict's College, Atchison, 

 Kansas, communicated to me a short time ago. 



». . . I want to tell vou about the peculiar conduct of a Summer Tanager 



( Piranga rubra) which a number of the professors witnessed daily for 

 several weeks. It was during the last week of May that the bird first 

 began to attract attention. He would be seen to fly from window to win- 

 dow on the north side of the west wing of the College, or perch on the 

 sill, facing inward, as if peering through the window. Every few 

 moments he would make an attack on the pane with his bill, as if he were 

 trying to get at something or force his way through. When driven from 

 one window he would fly to another. His attacks were at times quite 

 vicious : he would fly from a neighboring tree directly for the window and 

 strike the pane with a whack. Time and again he attracted my attention 

 in my room, though the door was shut. Several times I took my stand 

 directly in front of the closed window within a few feet of him and watched 

 him closely at his seeming mad effort to peck holes through the pane. He 

 did not seem to care much whether I stood there or not. I opened one of 

 the windows on several occasions to see if he would come in, but he did 



