32 Zhe Warbler 



and Bonaparte) is undoubtedly the young of the great Whooping Crane, as 

 I have ascertained in a pair kept in confinement, which either in the second 

 or third year of their age assumed the form and plumage of the adult bird, 

 the Grus Amaricana. 



Many birds make occasional and partial migrations only to procure a 

 supply of food; thus the common Partridge {Perdix virginiana) in seasons when 

 there is a scarcity of grain in New Jersey crosses the Delaware River into 

 Pennsylvania. The same has been observed along the Susquehanna and 

 Hudson. The flight of these birds is so heavy that they are seldom able to 

 reach the opposite shores on the wing, but drop into the water when they 

 are weary and swim across. This is also the case with that most delicious 

 of all birds — the Wild Turkey. Along the Ohio, Missouri and Mississippi 

 Rivers, numbers of these in the seasons of a scarcity of their accustomed 

 food, cross those rivers partly by flying and then by swimming, and in this 

 wet and exhausted state are taken in great numbers, either in the rivers or 

 as they arrive on the opposite shores. The wild Pigeon (Cotumba migra- 

 torict) is another of those birds that is supposed to be driven among us only 

 by the extreme cold of the North. This is a mistake. They appear in 

 Carolina only at very long and uncertain intervals. Sometimes they visit 

 us in cold, but frequently in warm winters. I have seen the wild Pigeon in 

 immense flocks in Canada in the coldest winters when the thermometer was 

 below zero. It is to be remarked that the previous autumm had produced 

 an abundance of beech nuts and buckwheat, their favorite food, and that the 

 around was not covered with snow. It is onlv when the forests of the West 



& * 



have failed in their usual supply of mast and berries, that the wild Pigeons 

 come among us to claim a share of the acorns, beech nuts and berries of our 

 woods, and the refuse grains scattered over our rice fields. 



Whether the occasional changes in the migrations of the birds of our 

 Continent may not in the course of time introduce among us some species 

 of birds from the South and West, that are not now found here, is not im- 

 probable. A large number of the feathered race follow the improvements 

 of civilized man. No sooner does cultivation commence than many birds 

 which were unknown in the forest around him are seen in his fields and or- 

 chard. A new species of grain attracts the graminivorous bird, a particular 

 plant or tree on which certain caterpillars or insects feed invites the Sylvias, 

 Vireos, and Muscicapas, and the tubular flowers of the West Indies trans- 

 planted in the soil of Florida, are already beginning to attract some of the 

 many species of Hummingbirds of the South. In the days of Wilson (one 

 of the most observing of our American ornithologists) the great Carolina 

 Wren {Troglodytes ludovicianns) and the Pine-creeping Warbler {Sylvia 

 pinus) together with several other species were unknown in the Northern 



