no



The New York Zoological Park.



Now that the young are gone, I do not feel half as much

interest in those “ Ruficaudas” as I did a month ago. Who is it

that says “ The enjoyment is the pursuit, and this ceases when

our hand closes down on the prize”?



THE NEW YORK ZOOLOGICAL PARK.


We have received from Mr. C. William Beebe, the Curator

of Ornithology at the New York Zoological Park, some copies

of the valuable and beautifully illustrated Bulletin of the Zoo¬

logical Society of New York ; and some of the notes therein on the

birds in the Zoological Park are of very great interest.


The Park comprises about two hundred and seventy acres,

part of which is in a wild, wooded condition, while much is given

up to the collection of animals. The number of wild birds

which, apparently attracted by the protection offered to them,

nest within the boundary is remarkable; Mr. Beebe’s list enu¬

merates sixty-two species, all of which have reared young in a

wild state in the Park. This seems an extraordinary number when

one considers that it is actually in the City of New York.


Mr. Beebe writes :—“The most interesting wild bird which

has been observed breeding in the Zoological Park is the Law¬

rence Warbler ( Helminthophila lawrencei, Herrick). On June

13th of the present j^ear Dr. Wiegmann and myself found a male

Lawrence Warbler mated with a female Blue-winged Warbler

(//. punis), both birds carrying food to a brood of six young birds

in a ground nest. The young birds all left the nest safely on

June 16tli. This is the twelfth Lawrence Warbler to be placed

on record, and the first recorded instance of its breeding.”


Wild ducks frequently visit those on the lakes in the Park,

and this year a wild duck paired with one of the pinioned birds,

and would not desert even when the young ones were being

caught up and pinioned. A pair of Black-crowned Night Herons

breed each year at the top of one of the most inaccessible trees,

and the young, when they begin to shift for themselves, pay

frequent visits to some of the same species which are kept in a

great Tying cage. Hawks, Owls, five species of Flycatchers, two



