HABITS OF bell's geeenlet 529 



Eeferring also to Illinois, Mr. E. W. Kelson states that Bell's 

 Greenlets were abundant in August, 1876, in the shrubbery of 

 Fox Prairie, Eichland County: — "They were exceedingly shy, 

 and although several could be heard uttering their curious song 

 and the same tune, and repeaited efforts were made to secure 

 them, only two specimens were obtained." Mr. Nelson subse- 

 quently saw a specimen which had been taken near Chicago in 

 June of the same year, and considers that they will eventually 

 be found throughout the State. The bird is one of several 

 Western species which, belonging to prairie land, extend their 

 range to Illinois, where the surface-conditions are essentially 

 the same as those of the western sides of the Mississippi Basin. 

 Among others may be mentioned the Western Meadow Lark, 

 LeConte's Bunting, Cassin's Finch, and the Painted Lark- 

 bunting. 



Whilst journeying across the Plains in 1864, en route to Ari- 

 zona, I was detained for some days in the vicinity of Fort Eiley, 

 Kansas, by an " Indian scare " from the front, and employed 

 the time very profitably in observing and collecting birds along 

 the Republican Fork of the Kansas Eiver. The season — late in 

 May — was propitious, and the place proved to be a famous one 

 for birds, which thronged the river-botton. Bell's Vireos were 

 then in full song and feather, and no one could enter the 

 shrubbery without being oddly saluted by these inquisitive 

 little busy-bodies, who seemed to have pre-empted the whole 

 water-front of the country, and were quite ready to insist upon 

 their squatter sovereignty. I found no nests, however, proba- 

 bly because there were none yet built, and was obliged to content 

 myself with watching the curious ways of the birds, and skin- 

 ning a few for the further purposes of science. For all that I 

 saw of their habits, they might as well have been White-eyes ; 

 but their notes are different. 



In 1861, we had advices from Dr. Cooper of the presence of 

 Bell's Vireo in the Colorado Valley, where he stated that it 

 occurred at Fort Mojave. But when shortly afterward the 

 nearly related V. pusillus came to be described, it was presumed 

 that the latter had been mistaken for V. belli. The reference 

 to the supposed belli from California was therefore turned over 

 to pusillus in my origiiiial notice of the latter, and it was entirely 

 ignored by Cooper himself in his recent " Ornithology of Cali- 

 fornia "- This left us without satisfactory evidence of the pres- 

 ence of Bell's Vireo west of the Eocky Mountains. A habitat so 

 34 B 



