General Notes. --|7 



CoLAptes auratl's -f- C. mexicanus. — Quite ii number of instances 

 of specimens of Colaftcs auratus showing traces of C. mexicanus coining 



to mv knowledge, I have thought it worth the while to record them. In 

 this Bulletin, Vol. V, No. i. p. 46, I noted the capture of one of these 

 abnormal individuals by myself at Fort Hamilton. Its black mustaches 

 were sprinkled with red feathers, and its back was different from that of 

 ordinary auratus. the black bars being very narrow, and the ground color 

 more of a brownish-olive, nearly corresponding to Audubon's Plate of C. 

 ayresi (Birds of America, Vol. VII). Last autumn (1S80) I shot two 

 more " Highholders" having a few red feathers intermixed with the black 

 cheek patches. These are all the cases of this curious variation that have 

 come under my personal observation, but Messrs. Bell and Wallace of 

 New York furnish me with some valuable notes on the subject. Mr. Bell 

 tells me he has had several such in his many years of experience as 

 a taxidermist. He remembers one in particular which was remarkable 

 for the deep salmon color of the parts which are golden-yellow in normal 

 auratus. Nearly half of each of the maxillary patches of this specimen 

 was red. It was shot in Orange Co., N. Y., or in some adjacent county. 

 Mr. Wallace also says he has had a number of these varieties, and among 

 them the strangest case of differentiation I have yet heard of. A few years 

 ago a Colaptes was brought to him, one side of which was auratus and 

 the other mexicanus. That is, one of the mustaches was black and the 

 other red. and the quills and under surfaces of wings and tail on the cor- 

 responding sides were respectively yellow and red. 



Mr. Ridgway, in this Bulletin, Vol. VI, No. 2, p. 121, says that of two 

 hundred aurati taken in the vicinity of Mount Carmel, 111., which he had 

 examined, he detected only one aberrant specimen showing any trace of 

 mexicanus. As out of thirty shot last fall at Fort Hamilton and examined 

 bj me two showed this variation, it may be that these mixed forms are more 

 plentiful in the Atlantic States than in the interior. In view of the num- 

 ber of known instances of these "half-breeds" occurring in the East we 

 need not be surprised if some cis-Alleghany collector yet takes a pure 

 mexicanus. — De L. Berier, Fort Hamilton, Long Is/and, N. Y. 



Further Notes ox the Labrador Gyrfalcon taken ox Loxg 

 Islaxd, N. Y. — In the Bulletin for April, 1881, page 126, I recorded the 

 capture of Falco gyrfalco obsoletus on Long Island, in Queens County, my 

 information being derived from Mr. J. Wallace of New York City. Since 

 then I have received a more detailed account of the matter from the <jen- 

 tleman above named, and to correct some doubts which have probably 

 arisen as to the accuracy of my note, I make this somewhat length} 

 statement. The bird in question was shot in the autumn of 1S75, near 

 Flushing, Q^ueens Co., and brought to Mr. Wallace by two men. They 

 were in haste and left saying they would return in a few days and give 

 the particulars of the bird's capture. They failed to do so, however, and 

 it was nearly two years before Mr. Wallace again met them. In the mean- 

 time he had presented the Falcon to Mr. George A. Boardman. Mr. Wal- 

 lace, knowing nothing of the bird except that it had been brought to him 



