98 



Bird - Lore 



2^irtr=lLor£ 



A Bi-Monthly Magazine 

 Devoted to the Study and Protection of Birds 



OFFICIAL ORGAN OF THE AUDUBON SOCIETIES 



Edited by FRANK M. CHAPMAN 



Contributing Editor, MABEL OSGOOD WRIGHT 



Published by D. APPLETON & CO. 



Vol. XIX Published April 1,1917 No. 2 



SUBSCRIPTION RATES 

 Price in the United States, one dollar a year; outside the 

 United States, one dollar and twenty-five cents, postage paid. 



COPYRIGHTED. 1917, BY FRANK M. CHAPMAN 



Bird-Lore's Motto: 

 A Bird in the Bush Is Worth Two in the Hand 



With the next issue of Bird-Lore we 

 plan to inaugurate an undertaking which 

 it is hoped will be of much interest and 

 value to field students. Authorities on the 

 bird-life of certain regions have consented 

 to supply us with a brief summary of 

 seasonable news in that part of the bird 

 world with which they are familiar. They 

 will tell us, for example, of the character of 

 the winter bird-life of their respective 

 districts, whether it is distinguished by 

 the presence of rare winter visitants or 

 absence of those which should be expected 

 to occur. They will report, in a general 

 way, on the advance of the migration, and, 

 in short, give a resume of their own obser- 

 vations and those of other local observers 

 who may report to them. The information 

 they contribute will thus serve as a stan- 

 dard of comparison for those students who 

 would know whether conditions in bird- 

 life, as they observe them, are usual or 

 exceptional. These reports will be pub- 

 lished as a sub-department of 'Notes from 

 Field and Study,' under the editorship of 

 Mr. Charles H. Rogers. 



The year 1916 was rendered memorable 

 in the annals of ornithology by two re- 

 markable discoveries. During the sum- 

 mer, William Stein, a member of one of the 

 American Museum's paleontological expe- 

 ditions, found the skeleton of a gigantic 

 fossil bird in the lower Eocene deposits of 

 Wyoming. This bird, we learn from a short 

 preliminary announcement in 'The Ameri- 



can Museum Journal,' "was much larger 

 than an Ostrich, although not so tall, and 

 had a huge head with a high compressed 

 beak, unlike any living bird." A study of 

 this skeleton has revealed some unexpected 

 facts which, in due time, will be published. 



The fossil bird record is so fragmentary 

 that we are apt to take for granted almost 

 any addition to it; but our knowledge of 

 living birds is so comparatively complete 

 that we were not prepared for Dr. W. L. 

 Abbott's most surprising discovery that 

 a local race of the White- winged Crossbill* 

 inhabits the mountains of Santo Domingo. 



If the bird were a Red Crossbill its 

 presence, even in a West Indian island, 

 might not be so astounding. Red Cross- 

 bills are found as far south as the pine 

 forests of Central America and, in the 

 Alleghanies, to Georgia; but the White- 

 winged species is more boreal and is not 

 known to nest south of New England. 

 How then can we account for its presence 

 as a permanent resident so far south of 

 the range of the species it represents? 



We may ask the same question about the 

 Horned Larks that live on the Savanna of 

 Bogota in the Eastern Andes of Colombia. 

 No other Horned Lark is found in South 

 America or, indeed, in Central America; 

 the nearest point at which the species 

 occurs being southern Mexico. 



Possibly we may regard these birds as 

 indicators in nature's self-registering ther- 

 mometer. Reaching the regions they now 

 occupy during climatic conditions which 

 no longer prevail, one has found a favor- 

 able home in the pine forests of a Carib- 

 bean island, the other, suitable haunts on 

 a temperate zone Andean plateau. The 

 climate, which we may believe forced them 

 southward, has retreated, so to speak, to 

 its present level, leaving behind it these 

 records on the scale of time. 



There is small resemblance between the 



giant bird which existed some millions of 



years ago in Wyoming, the Crossbill of 



Santo Domingo and Horned Lark of 



Colombia, but what profound depths of 



ignorance the light they shed reveals! 



*See Riley, Smiths Misc. Coll., Vol. 66, No. 15, 

 1916, p. I 



