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ORNITHOLOGIST 



[Vol. 8-No. 4 



doviciamis,) essentially a more southern 

 species, has of late years become much 

 more common here than formerly. There 

 has scarcely been a day this Winter that I 

 have not heard its clear, I'inging note. I 

 have taken it as far north as Delphi. 



Bird Notes. February 10th was a royal 

 day for bird-collecting here ; I got the 

 following: White-winged Crossbill, Red 

 Crossbill, Lapland Longspur and Pine 

 Goldfinch — neither of which I ever saw 

 alive before. Neither of the Crossbills had 

 ever been taken in the State before, at 

 least there is no record of their having 

 been taken. The last two are very rare. 



— S. W. JSverman, Hloomington, Ind. 



-^ 



Odd Bird Songs. 



Mr. Burroughs in his charming book, 

 Wake-Robin, speaks of hearing the Gold- 

 en-crowned Thrush sing a ditty much 

 different from its usual song. He says it 

 is a rare burst of melody, seldom indulged 

 in, and delivered while the bird is in the 

 air over the tree tops, or while chasing a 

 rival through the forest. I have never 

 heard any one else allude to this, but have 

 had the same experience myself with the 

 Golden-crowned and other of our warblers. 

 In Pike county, Penn., last Spring, I found 

 the Golden-crowned Thrush extremely 

 common, and along a certain old moun- 

 tain road almost any evening I could hear 

 his musical squabble. It generally came 

 from fighting birds ; but one afternoon in 

 the same place one sprang up before me, 

 and singing a few notes of his usual tee- 

 chee, suddenly broke off into a highly mu- 

 sical, very mixed up ditty, which ended in 

 another tee-chee. 



I was attracted once by an odd song that 

 I had never heard, which came from far 

 back in the woods. I followed the sound 

 and discovered its author perched on one 

 of the lower limbs of a great pine. The song 

 was a mixture of rather sweet and harsh 

 notes, very peculiar and as long as a spar- 

 rows. I let him sing again and then 



brought him down, and he proved to be 

 a Black-throated Green Warbler in perfect 

 plumage. This indeed was an oddity, for 

 the bird's usual sweet warble was vastly 

 different from the notes I had just heard. 

 Walking along a meadow-path one evening 

 at dusk a Maryland Yellow-throat flew up 

 before me, and hovering in the air for a 

 moment in the manner of the dancing chat, 

 sang a lively rattle-to-bang kind of song, 

 then darted into the bushes and was quiet. 

 Another time I noticed a bird of the same 

 species, without any apparent cause or ex- 

 citement, suddenly leave the bushes where 

 he had been singing his usual notes, and 

 flying twenty or thirty feet into the air, 

 almost perpendicularly, sing the same med- 

 ly while rising sky-lark fashion. As soon 

 as he ceased he came quickly back to earth 

 again and hid himself in the bushes. — S. 

 Frank Aaron, Phila., Pa. 



Studer's Birds of North America. 



A new edition of the above work is be- 

 ing pushed upon the public from New York 

 city, and a good many copies, will, no 

 doubt, be sold to the inexjDerienced, espec- 

 ially as such papers as the Independent 

 lends themselves to puff it. What we can- 

 not understand is that the name of Dr. 

 Elliott Coues is used to puff this book. At 

 first we doubted it luitil we saw the Doc- 

 tor's allusion to it in the Bulletin, and even 

 now we should rather attribute it to his 

 good nature than his better judgment. He 

 is made to say : 



" I can heartily commend the whole work as one admira- 

 bly meeting the design of a popular ornithology of North 

 America, at once instructive and entertaining, at a reason- 

 able price. The text is perfectly reliable. The technical 

 nomenclature is correct, being that used by the best orni- 

 tholo-rists of this country." 



For the beneflt of our readers we would 

 like to ask the Doctor if he did really write 

 the above endorsement of the work, and 

 if he will give his reasons for so doing ? 

 The work is also strongly lauded by Prof. 

 Henry A. Ward and Prof. J. S. Newberry, 

 of Columbia College, N. Y. We have no 

 objection for these gentlemen to place 



