ANNOTATED LIST 



OF THE 



BIRDS OF THE CAMBRIDGE REGION. 



I. Colymbus holboellii (Reinh.). 

 Holbcell's Grebe. 



Of rare occurrence during migration and in winter. 



Although HolboeU's Grebe is a common spring and autumn migrant, and 

 a not uncommon winter resident, at many localities on the seacoast of Massa- 

 chusetts, it seems to be a rather rare visitor to the Cambridge Region. There 

 is a specimen in the New England collection of the Boston Society of Natural 

 History which was killed on January 4, 1869, in the Back Bay Basin, where, on 

 a few occasions in late autumn, I have seen single birds swimming about not far 

 from West Boston Bridge. I have never met with the species in any of our 

 fresh-water ponds, but Mr. Walter Faxon saw a solitary bird in the Upper Mys- 

 tic Pond on April 27, 1893, and Mr. John H. Hardy, Jr., in a letter dated April 

 4, 1905, tells me of the capture of two specimens in Arlington. One of 

 these, he says, was shot "in Spy Pond, in October, about fifteen years ago, by 

 O. W. Whittemore." It "was identified by George Freeman who was a local 

 authority on sea- and water-fowl." The other bird was killed in Lower Mystic 

 Pond in October, 1902, by Charles Sunergren who lives on the shore of the 

 pond." I have further learned from Mr. Warren E. Freeman, a son of Mr. 

 George Freeman, that in October, 1904, — about the loth of the month, he 

 thinks — he examined a freshly killed HolboeU's Grebe which had been taken in 

 Spy Pond. The gunner in whose possession he found it refused to part with 

 the bird and Mr. Freeman does not know what afterwards became of it. 



