154 MEMOIRS OF THE NUTTALL ORNITHOLOGICAL CLUB. 



Frazar with the following story : On the morning of the day before (the 20th) 

 he found "fully one thousand" of these Phalaropes swimming in Charles River 

 between the Craigie and the West Boston Bridges. The weather was foggy at 

 the time, and he thought that the birds, which were very tame, must have come 

 in during the preceding night. They stayed until noon, when they rose to a 

 considerable height and flew off in the direction of Boston Harbor. Mr. Frazar 

 credits this account, but he thinks that the number of birds may have been exag- 

 gerated. I saw the specimens just referred to immediately after they had been 

 skinned. All three were in full nuptial plumage. It is singular that neither 

 the Red nor the Northern Phalarope has been noted in any of the fresh- water 

 ponds of the Cambridge Region, for elsewhere in .New England both species 

 are of by no means rare occurrence in autumn about inland waters. 



58. Philohela minor (Gmel.). 

 American Woodcock. 



Formerly an abundant summer resident, now rare in summer and but an uncommon 

 transient visitor in spring and autumn. 



SEASONAL OCCURRENCE. 



February 13, i8go, two seen, Waverley, F. B. PuUen. 



March 15 — November 10. 

 December 13, 1871, one im. male taken, Waverley, W. Brewster. 



NESTING DATES. 



April 15 — 25. 



Dr. Samuel Cabot once told me that when he was at Harvard College 

 ( 1 832-1 836) he used to get fairly good Woodcock shooting within the present 

 limits of the city of Cambridge. A tract of springy ground grown up to alders 

 at the base of the knoll where the Fresh Fond Hotel formerly stood was sure, 

 he said, to harbor eight or ten birds, and he even shot a few in the College 

 Delta. Dr. Walter Woodman mentions the Woodcock in his manuscript Hst 

 of the birds which he found in Norton's Woods in summer between 1866 and 

 1870. 



During the early years of my own experience or, to be more definite, 

 between 1865 and 1870, I flushed Woodcock occasionally in early spring in the 



