162 



THE OOLOGIST ^^(<^),l^^7 



This lone bird was kept in captivity 

 in the hope of finding her a mate un- 

 til she died which was on September 

 1st, 1914 at 1 p. m. 



With this bird, which was the last 

 representative of such a great species, 

 the once plentiful Passenger Pigeon 

 disappeared from the face of the earth 

 forever . 



A. M. Martin. 



The information for this article was 

 gotten from the old inhabitants of 

 Texas and from veterans of the Civil 

 War. 



A. D. M. 



NOTES 

 A Rare Visitant 



In our earlier boyhood days the 

 American Egret was one of the most 

 common birds to be found along this 

 part of the Illinois River It nested 

 in this county by the hundred, having 

 at least two very large colonies; one 

 of which contained several hundred 

 nests, and in the fall it migrated South 

 along the valley for months by the 

 thousand. Every dead tree and stump 

 was decorated by one of these beauti- 

 ful pure white birds and the shallow 

 lagoons along the river at times held 

 great droves of them, but they are all 

 gone now. The last Egret nesting in 

 this territory was in 1897, about 

 eleven miles north of Lacon. A small 

 colony of a few which was shut out 

 by a merciless plume hunter. 



During the August just past, one 

 lone bird of this variety has been liv- 

 ing in the swamps about a mile or 

 south of Lacon. Needless to say, it 

 is attracting a great deal of attention 

 and up to the time of writing, no one 

 has disturbed it. — Editor 

 Some Rare Birds of Eastern Kansas. 



During the w^inter of 1915-16, a 

 Townsend's Solitaire of the Western 

 United States, was present in this im- 

 mediate vicinity. Again, last winter. 



one was seen. Then on January 4th, 

 a second one showed up. On Decem- 

 ber 1st, the first one pleased us by a 

 very beautiful warble. They didn'r 

 stay around so long as the first one 

 did the year before. They were not 

 seen much after the middle of Janu- 

 ary; most likely they were mates as 

 they were never far from each other. 

 This bird is rare this far East. 



Last summer a Lazuli Bunting was 

 seen at does range, singing a song 

 very much like his indigo cousins. He 

 seems to have been a mere freak 

 straggler and had not been heard nor 

 seen before, nor was he after. This 

 was the first of July. As far as can 

 be ascertained, he is a new one for 

 this region. 



This spring, at close range, I studied 

 a Black-throated Green Warbler for 

 quite a while, about the middle of 

 May. He sang a very funny little 

 song. This is the second or third 

 specimen reported from Kansas. 



A. Sidney Hyde. 



Nesting of the Prairie Horned Lark. 



As I can find no published record 

 of the actual finding of a nest of the 

 Prairie Horned Lark (Otocoris alpest- 

 ris praticola) in my own locality, the 

 following notes may be of interest. 



A friend of mine, Mr. Percival 

 Wardwell, told me that that Prairie 

 Horned Larks had nested on a hill 

 pasture in front of his house at Stone- 

 ham, Mass., in 1915, and again In 

 1916. He did not keep a note of the 

 date he found the nest in 1915,, but 

 last year, 1916, he found a nest con- 

 taining three eggs on April 19th. On 

 April 24th the nest contained young. 

 May 2nd the nest was empty. 



On March 25, 1917, I visited the 

 pasture and saw one of the Larks 

 feeding there. On April 1st, I saw a 

 pair of the birds and they were very 

 tame. They kept iiear a low rock 



