c6 General Notes. j^j^J^ 



entlj a place in which they have taken up a permanent abode. Flying 

 from these high perches they look not a little like Martins, and might be 

 mistaken for them at a season when the latter birds are present. 



A Starling was killed about a year ago in the immediate outskirts of 

 Brooklyn by a boy who knocked it down with a stone. I am unable to 

 give the date. 



I first noted the Starling in the field on October 8, this year, when a 

 flock of a dozen or more was seen perched in a tree by the roadside near 

 the Kensington Station. During this and the next month I saw them in 

 this locality several times. Once or twice one or more birds were seen 

 on the piazza roof of a suburban cottage in apparently frtetidly com- 

 pany with English Sparrows. On October 22, about thirty individ- 

 uals of this species were seen in this neighborhood. Two specimens 

 were shot, the stomachs of which were sent to Dr. Merriam, chief of 

 the United States Biological Survey. 



The bill of fare of the Starling has not been materially changed by its 

 transportation to another continent. It enjoys in England at about the 

 same time of j'ear, about the same food. In the one full stomach ex- 

 amined (the other was nearly empty), ninety-five per cent of the contents 

 was animal matter, mainly insects (multipeds and beetles, larval lampyrids^ 

 grasshoppers, crickets, ichneumonid, caterpillar), but also included two- 

 small pieces of bone, " probably belonging to some batrachian." The 

 five per cent was merely vegetable rubbish. Dr. Merriam kindly stated 

 that the contents of this stomach, examined hy Prof. Beal, agree essen- 

 tially with those of three stomachs taken in England in October. 



The bird will doubtless widen its range on Long Island, though its 

 extension in this direction since its introduction into New York Citj', 

 in 1890, has not as yet been rapid. — William C. Braislin, M. D.,. 

 Brooklyn, N. Y. 



The Song of the Western Meadow Lark. — In 'The Osprey' of July- 

 August, 1897, Rev. P. B. Peabody must refer to me as the recent writer 

 in the 'The Auk,' in connection with the song of the Western Meadow- 

 lark {Sturfiella tnagna neglecta). The twelve examples which were 

 copied by me at Gridley, Cal., and published in the ' The Auk' of Janu- 

 ary, 1896, had been heard year after year by me, some of them at least a 

 thousand times, and were very carefully copied with the help of pitch 

 pipe and paper, and I should have stated in the most positive manner 

 that I had heard them sung perfectly many times, although I had 

 heard them sung imperfectly oftener than otherwise. In the brief 

 note which accompanied those twelve examples of musical notation 

 in ' The Auk,' I said I had heard more luriteable songs at Gridley 

 than in any and all other places where I had been in California. The 

 truth is that I have never heard these songs outside of the township of 

 Gridle}', excepting two of them which I have heard near Stockton, where^ 

 as at Gridley, I have spent much time. 



