90 THE OSPREY. 



largest measures from tip of bill to tip of tail 16f inches, wing expansion, 37 

 inches; the second, 36fxl6, and the third, 34^x13^ inches. 



Near the middle of August the birds seem to be very active at feeding; 

 evidently they are then preparing for their southward journey. A specimen 

 shot in the last da3's of August was so fat that I found it impossible to make a 

 first-class skin of it; the breastbone sank far below the level of the breast meat. 



As the first days of September approach the last individuals may be seen 

 slowly flying southward; then the woods lose their charm to me for the sky 

 has lost its gem, the Mississippi Kite. 



RECENT VIEWS OF THE SABLE ISLAND OR 

 IPSWICH SPARROW. 



By W. E. Saunders, London, Can. 



A little more than eight years ago Dr. Jonathan D wight, Jun., visited 

 Sable Island for the purpose of studying the habits of the so-called Ipswich 

 Sparrow and published the results of his observations in an excellent mono- 

 graph of the bird . In 1901, I also made a visit to the island and the chief 

 pleasure anticipated w:is the opportunity for observing in nature the same bird. 

 I have already published the principal results in the Ottawa Naturalist in an 

 article on the "Birds of Sable Island, N. S. " but reproduce them now in a 

 more connected form. The difference between the species in 1894 and 1901 

 will be noticed with interest. 



Sable Island lies about sixty miles south of the nearest coast of Nova 

 Scotia, and 150 miles, a little southeast, from Halifax. The island is in the 

 form of an elongated crescent, with its concave side to the north. It is nearly 

 25 miles long and only about a mile wide in most places. At each end it 

 tapers down to a point of bare sand without any sign of vegetation whatever, 

 and over them the sea sweeps at every high tide, and with every stormy wind. 



Most people who have any idea at all about Sable Island think of it as a 

 desert sandbar, over which shaggy ponies glean a scanty subsistence from the 

 tough native grasses and on whose shore many lives have been sacrificed by 

 shipwreck during the past three hundred years; but I viewed the island from 

 an ornithological standpoint, and as usual the point of view made all the dif- 

 ference in the world. Instead of being a desert island on which there wae 

 scarcely anything to interest one, it had for several years been known to me 

 as the only home in the world of the Ipswich sparrow, and so far as I knew 

 only one ornithologist had enjoyed the privilege of seeing this bird during the 

 season of housekeeping. It is called the Ipswich sparrow from the fact of the 



