188 General Notes. [^«J 



adult male of this species shot at Marblehead on December 29th, 1900." 

 This statement is not quite correct for I have both wings of the Marblehead 

 bird and they indicate plainly that it was not more than six or seven 

 months old when killed, being essentially like those of a female Widgeon 

 and wholly without the white patches which, according to Millais, are 

 sometimes shown by the male soon after the close of his first winter and 

 invariably assumed by him before the end of his second autumn; after 

 which he never lacks them at any season, — even when masquerading, for 

 a brief time in late summer, in the subdued garb so generally like that of 

 his mate and so appropriately termed his "eclipse" plumage. — William 

 Brewster, Cambridge, Mass. 



Snow Geese in Massachusetts. — The seaboard of eastern Massachusetts 

 was once visited regularly by considerable numbers of Snow Geese, if 

 we may credit the testimony of certain early Colonial writers. Thus Wood, 

 referring to the region about Lynn and to a period extending from 1629 

 to 1633, says they came "in great flockes about Michelmas" and after 

 remaining six weeks, filed "to the Southward, returning in March and stay- 

 ing sixe weeks more" before continuing their spring migration northward. 

 Just when they discontinued this practise is not definitely known but it 

 was probably abandoned long before the beginning of the Nineteenth 

 Century. During the past fifty years or more they seem to have occurred 

 only at infrequent intervals and, as a rule, singly, although Dr. Townsend 

 reports : that as lately as November, 1903, Mr. W. H. Vivian "saw a flock 

 of about fifty white birds resting on the beach at Ipswich" Massachusetts. 

 " He thought at first they were gulls, but they got up and flew off honking 

 and he saw that they were white geese." 



In view of some of the facts just mentioned I was not less surprised than 

 interested to learn that Mr. M. Abbott Frazar had seen a large flock of Snow 

 Geese at Townsend, Massachusetts, on April 13, 190S. He has written me 

 two letters concerning them, from which, with his kind permission, I now 

 make the following extracts, changing or transposing a word or two here or 

 there : — 



"I heard the geese making a tremendous noise in the distance and soon 

 caught sight of them about a mile away, coming towards me and flying 

 in a compact bunch, not in V-shape. They were all calling and acting as if 

 lost or badly scared. They passed directly over my head not seventy 

 yards up. There were at least seventy-five and more likely one hundred 

 in the flock, .... and all were in full plumage. I looked them over carefully 

 to make sure there were no Canadas in the lot and there was not a gray bird 

 of any kind. I could not be in doubt about this for they had not passed 

 my house over four hundred yards when they swung so that the light shone 

 on them making them look like a snow bank in which a dark bird would 



1 C. W. Townsend, Birds of Essex County, Massachusetts, Mem. Nutt. Orn. 

 Club, No. Ill, p. 147. 



