BIRDS OF THE CAMBRIDGE REGION. 131 



42. Plegadis autumnalis (Hasselq.). 

 Glossy Ibis. 



Casual visitor, known to liave occurred on but one occasion — in May, 1850. 



According to the late Mr. F. C. Browne, to whom we are indebted for the 

 best account ^ which has ever appeared of the little flight of Glossy Ibises that 

 invaded eastern Massachusetts in 1850, the well-known specimen taken in 

 Cambridge during that year, and now in the New England collection of the 

 Boston Society of Natural History, was shot on May 8, " at Fresh Pond in this 

 town by classmate E. Brown [Edward Wyeth Brown], from a flock of three." ^ 

 One of the two survivors was thought by Mr. F. C. Browne to have been the 

 Ibis which was captured at Concord, Massachusetts, about the same time and 

 which also has found its final resting-place in the collection of the Boston 

 Society. The third bird has never been satisfactorily accounted for. 



The locality above given for the Cambridge specimen is, of course, suffi- 

 ciently definite for general purposes, but it may be of interest in the present 

 connection to state that Mr. E. W. Brown told Mr. Walter Faxon, a few years 

 since, that the bird was killed in a meadow just north of the turnpike road 

 (Concord Avenue) near what is now the extreme southwestern end of the 

 Glacialis. 



On the evening of July 14, 1878, while driving in Belmont, I saw a flock 

 of about twenty large birds flying southward at a moderate elevation. Moving 

 very swiftly with quick, continuous wing beats, they crossed the road at some 

 distance ahead of me in a broad extended front — or rather in a line drawn at 

 right angles with their course. Had it not been for the fact that they appeared 

 to be wholly dark-colored, I should have taken them for White Ibises, which they 

 closely resembled in shape and in manner of flight. They certainly were not 

 Ducks, Herons, Curlews, nor any of the other birds of similar size which occur 

 regularly in eastern Massachusetts. I have always believed that they were 

 Glossy Ibises, but I have no disposition to insist on the probability of such a 

 conjecture, for it undeniably rests on evidence which is far from satisfactory. 

 Indeed, I should not consider the incident worth mentioning, were it not for the 

 recorded fact that during May of that same year several Glossy Ibises were shot 

 on Cape Cod. 



' F. C. Browne, Auk, IV, 1887, 97-100. 

 '^Ibid., 97. 



