Two Rare Birds for Massachusetts. — I should like to record the 

 recent occurrence in Lexington, Mass., of two birds, rare in eastern Massa- 

 chusetts. Shortly before seven in the morning, April 26, 1913, a Carolina 

 Wren (Thryoihorus ludovicianus ludovicianus) passed rapidly northward 

 through my yard, singing loudly. Soon afterward, Mr. Walter Faxon, 

 from his house half a mile to the north, heard the song. An hour later, 

 we followed the wren's northward course for nearly a mile until we overtook - 

 him, singing from a tangle of brush. Prom here he turned squarely to the 

 west and, still in the brush, continued to an alder swamp where he dropped 

 to the ground to feed and stopped singing. We found no further trace of 

 the bird either late in the afternoon of the 26th or the next morning. 



The second rarity, a Blue-winged Warbler ( Vermivora pinus), visited my 

 garden at 5 o'clock in the morning of May 6, 1913. He was in brilliant 

 plumage, showing no trace of mixed blood. He sang from the top of a 

 flowering plum tree the typical pinus song, — two drawling, buzzing notes. 

 This bird arrived, doubtless, with the heavy migration wave of the previous 

 night which brought the orioles and most of the resident warblers, including 

 the Blue-winged Warbler's relative, V. chrysoptera. 



Mr. Faxon and I were especially interested in the presence of this war- 

 bler. In ' The Auk ' for October, 1907 (p. 444), Mr. Faxon recorded a male 

 Brewster's Warbler which had spent the preceding summer in Lexington, 

 and in the Memoirs of Museum of Comp. Zool., 1910 (XL, pp. 67-78), he 

 gave a detailed account of two female Brewster's Warblers which, mated 

 with V. chrysoptera, bred during the summer of 1910, in the same locahty 

 where the 1907 bird was found. Brewster's Warblers have returned to 

 this locality each year since 1910. 



In plumage the offspring of all these birds have followed the laws of 

 Mendelian heredity and the inference is that V. pinus has bred on some 

 former occasion in the vicinity and that these Brewster's Warblers are a 

 reUc of cross breeding. However, with the exception of " A nesting of the 

 Blue-winged Warbler in Massachusetts," by Horace W. Wright (Auk, 

 XXVI, No. 4, October, 1909) in Sudbury, twenty miles to the south, there 

 was, until now, no record of the occurrence of V. pinus for this immediate 

 region. The appearance this spring of a pui'e Blue-winged Warbler within 

 half a mile of the Brewster's breeding ground is a bit of corroborative evi- 

 dence that from time to time pure blood may be introduced into eastern 

 Massachusetts. 



Mr. Faxon and I believe that the present bird cannot have been a de- 

 scendant of a local V. leucohronchialis, for the reason that, without ex- 

 ception, the Brewster's Warblers in Lexington^ sing the V. chrysoptera 

 song. — WiNSOB M. Tyler, Lexington, Mass. i^jff^ T".iy" 19 ' " 



The Carolina Wren in the Maine Wilderness.— Late in June I 

 visited the Fish and Game Preserve of the Megantic Club which is located 

 in northwestern Maine, and extends from Beaver Pond, about twenty- 

 five miles north of the Rangeley Lake, to Lake Megantic in Quebec. A 

 large part of this is primeval forest, a clearing having been made only for 

 the accommodation of camps, and little or no lumbering has ever been done 

 on the preserve. 



I reached Beaver Pond about noon of June 21st, and almost the first 

 bird song I heard was that of the Carolina Wren. I did not succeed in 

 s eeing the bird, but one who is familiar with the song in the South, and has 

 heard it in New Jersey, and two or three times on Long Island, cannot 

 mistake it, even in the Maine woods. — John Lew.is Childs, Floral Path, 

 N. Y. 



Jh^>^KX Uh (Oct, /9/6. /ir ^3^. 



