PRELIMINARY NOTICES. 



the brown of the back. Primaries brown, secondaries between 

 the last-named colour and rusty iron-grey, of which colour are the 

 lesser coverts. Legs and feet strong, and of a dirty yellow. Bill 

 three and a half inches long, bluish black, turning into yellow to- 

 wards the mouth which is blue, and surrounded with a thick yel- 

 low skin. Found, though rarely, in the back settlements of Nortii 

 America. The knowledge evinced by these birds, and the care 

 of their young, are deserving notice. " In a few minutes," says 

 Mr. Audubon, " the other parent joined her mate, which, from 

 tl.e difference in size, we knew to be the mother bird. She had 

 brought a fish, but, more cautious than her mate,ere she alighted, 

 she glanced her quick and piercing eye around, and perceived 

 that her nest had been discovered ; she dropped her prey, with 

 a loud shriek commuuicated the alarm to the male, and, hover- 

 ing with him over our heads, kept up a growling threateniug cry, 

 to intimidate us from our design. The young having hid them- 

 selves, we picked up the fi>h, a white perch, which the mother 

 had let fall ; it weighed o^ lbs. the upper part of the head was 

 broken in, and the back torn by ti»e talons of the Eagle." Mr. 

 Audubon could not, however, obtain either of these birds, nor 

 one of their young. The specimen which he describes was 

 obtained by him on another occasion. 



Cilumha migriUoria, or Passenger Pigeon, page 120. Every 

 account from travellers confirms the immense numbers of these 

 birds in the back settlements of North America. An incalcu- 

 lable quantity were seen pas!:ing over, the village of Rodiester^ 

 {Genesee Coiinttjy N./l.) on the I3ih of December, 1828, from 

 the North. Such an unusual migration, at such a season of the 

 year, excited great attention ; and, what was very remarkable, 

 those of tliem which were taken were ve>yfat. Whence could 

 they have come; from some noriJtem sitmmer ? 



Another account, from the Siisquehannuh County Register, far 

 Mmj 1829, states that an encampment of these birds was about 

 ten miles from Montrose, N.A.; where they built nests and 

 reared their young : this encampment was upwards of nine miles 



