fm^: 



480 



AUDUBON 



I neatly passed him ere his horse was well at the pace; 

 on we went, and in a few minutes we entered a beautiful 

 dell or valley, and were in sight of the encampment. We 

 reached this in a trice, and rode between two lines of 

 pitched tents to one at the end, where I dismounted, and 

 met Captain Burgwin,^ a young man, brought up at West 

 Point, with whom I was on excellent and friendly terms 

 in less time than it has taken me to write this account of 

 our meeting. I showed him my credentials, at which he 

 smiled, and politely assured me that I was too well known 

 throughout our country to need any letters. While seated 

 in front of his tent, I heard the note of a bird new to me, 

 and as it proceeded from a tree above our heads, I looked 

 up and saw the first Yellow-headed Troupial alive that 

 ever came across my own migrations. The captain 

 thought me probably crazy, as I thought Rafinesque when 

 he was at Henderson ; for I suddenly started, shot at the 

 bird, and killed it. Afterwards I shot three more at one 

 shot, but only one female amid hundreds of these Yel- 

 low-headed Blackbirds. They are quite abundant here, 

 feeding on the surplus grain that drops from the horses' 

 troughs ; they walked under, and around the horses, with 

 as much confidence as if anywhere else. When they rose, 

 they generally flew to the very tops of the tallest trees, 

 and there, swelling their throats, partially spreading their 

 wings and tail, they issue their croaking note, which is a 

 compound, not to be mistaken, between that of the Crow 

 Blackbird and that of the Red-winged Starling. After I 

 had fired at them twice they became quite shy, and all of 

 them flew off to the prairies. I saw then two Magpies^ 



1 John Henry K. Burgwin, cadet at West Point in 1828 ; in 1843 a captain 

 of the ist Dragoons. He died Feb. 7, 1847, of wounds received three days 

 before in the assault on Pueblo de Taos, New Mexico. — E. C. 



^ The question of the specific identity of the American and European 

 Magpies has been much discussed. Ornithologists now generally compro- 

 mise the case by considering our bird to be subspecifically distinct, under 

 the name of Pica pica hudsonica. — E. C. , , , ,.. ,. ,, , 



