688 GEOLOGICAL SURVEY OF CANADA. 



country. They appear to have totally disappeared. This is un- 

 questionably owing to the breaking up of the virgin prairie. (E. T. 

 Seton.) A common summer resident at Aweme, Manitoba; arrives 

 about April 23rd and leaves about the middle of September. {Criddle.) 

 Heard numerous individuals singing in the east end of the Cypress 

 hills and saw one the last week in June, 1 894. Undoubtedly breed- 

 ing at this time. {Spreadborough.) Numerous from Touchwood 

 hills, Sask., west to Ribstone creek, Alta., in all the dry, treeless 

 districts. {Atkinson.) Entirely overlooked in S. W. Saskatchewan 

 in 1905, probably because we did not know where and how to 

 look for it or realize the difficulty of seeing it or hearing it. It 

 was really fairly common on the prairies in 1906, frequently heard 

 and less frequently seen. {A . C. Bent.) Fairly common in northern 

 Alberta where I listened with much pleasure to their interesting 

 but rather monotonous song, delivered at so great an altitude that 

 the bird was scarcely visible among the clouds. (W. E . Saunders.) 



Breeding Notes. — I did not see the bird in the immediate 

 vicinity of the Red river, and do not think I should have over- 

 looked it had any individuals been breeding about Pembina, where 

 I was every day in the field for more than a month collecting very 

 assiduously. Passing the low range of the Pembina mountains, 

 however, I at once entered the prairie region, where it was breeding 

 in great numbers, in company with Baird's and the chestnut-collared 

 buntings. The first one I shot, July 14th, was a bird of the year, 

 already full grown and on wing, and as I found scarcely fledged 

 young at least a month later I judge that, like the Eremophila, the 

 bird raises two broods a year. Travelling westward to and beyond 

 the second crossing of the Mouse river, no day passed that I did 

 not see numbers of the birds; and at some of our camps, notably 

 that at the first crossing of the Mouse river, they were so numerous 

 that the air seemed full of them; young ones were caught by the 

 hand in camp, and many might have been shot without stirring 

 from my tent, as they hovered overhead on tremulous wings, utter- 

 ing continuously their sharp querulous cry. They continued 

 abundant through the greater part of September, in which month 

 the renewal of the plumage is completed, and some still remained on 

 the ground till October. Exactly when they migrate, however, and 

 where they go to, or when they return, are equally unknown to me— 

 not the least singular point in the bird's history is the success with 



