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VOL. XIII. BOSTON, MASS., MARCH, 1888. No. 3. 



Notes on the Range of the Protho- 

 notary Warbler in Indiana. 



BY AMOS W. BUTLER, BKOOKVILLE, INU. 



Naturally one's attention is first directed to 

 the knowledge at hand when he beguis liis in- 

 vestigation, such has been the writer's course, 

 and with some general remarks concerning our 

 knowledge heretofore of the distribution of 

 Protonotarift citrea, this sliort article should be- 

 gin. With all the attention that has lieeu paid 

 in recent years to this brilliantly plumaged 

 species, comparatively little has been written 

 concerning its northward range; in fact, except 

 in a general way, not much is known of its dis- 

 tribution. 



Professor Baird in Vol. IX., Pacific Railroad 

 Reports, says of its range: "South Atlantic 

 and Gulf States to mouth of Ohio north.'' He 

 mentions three specimens in the Smithsonian 

 collection from Southern Illinois. Coues' Key, 

 edition of 1872, gives the same southern boun- 

 daries, but says: " Straying, however, to Ohio, 

 Missouri, and even Maine." Mr. liidgway's 

 Manual gives it as occurring in: "Willow 

 swamps and borders of ponds and streams in 

 bottom lands of the Mississippi Valley and 

 Gulf States, north regularly to Iowa, Illinois, 

 Indiana, etc." So far, in the standard works, 

 its northern range has not been approximated 

 within perhaps two hundred miles. The works 

 which treat of local or state bird fauna, give 

 one somewhat more satisfactory answers to his 

 inquiries. Mr. Nelson, in his "Birds of South- 

 ern Illinois," gives it as common in that part of 

 the State; and, in his later work on " Birds 

 of Northeastern Illinois," gives it as a " rare 

 summer resident " in the district treated. Dr. 

 Ridgway, in "Birds of Illinois," 1881, says: 

 " Abundant in Southern counties, rare north- 

 ward." Dr. Wheaton, in his " Report on the 

 Birds of Ohio," Vol. IV., of the geological sur- 

 vey of that State, says : " Only known in this 



State as a suraiuer resident in Western Ohio, 

 especially in the vicinity of St. Mary's Reser- 

 voir." Dr. Langdon, in his " Birds of the 

 vicinity of Cincinnati,'" 1877, and in his " re- 

 vised list," 187'J, does not include the Protho- 

 notary Warbler as having been taken in South- 

 western Ohio, but. on account of its having 

 been taken taken at St. Mary"s Reservoir, indi- 

 cates tiie probable occurrence of the species. 



Until within tlie past few years, so far as the 

 public is informed, this species had not been 

 taken in Indiana. Dr. Haymond did not in- 

 clude it in his list of Southeastern Indiana 

 Birds in the Proceedings of the Philadelphia 

 Academy for 18.56, nor in his Birds of Franklin 

 County, published in the State Geological Re- 

 port for 1869. Doubtless some of the collec- 

 tors in the lower Wabash Valley may not have 

 noticed this conspicuous bird, but the Bulletin 

 of the Nuttall Oi-nithological Club for October, 

 1878, contains a paper by William Brewster on 

 " The Prothonotary Warbler," which is the 

 flrst notice I have of its occurrence within this 

 State. This is supplemented by Mr. Ridgway's 

 paper in the same magazine for January, 1882, 

 which treats of the birds observed in Knox 

 County, Indiana. Both of these papers refer to 

 the southwestern part of the State. Nothing 

 was known of its extension further to the 

 nortliward until 1884. May 11, of that year, 

 Mr. II. K. Coale, of Chicago, Ills., found the 

 Prothonotaries very abundant in Stai'ke Coun- 

 ty, in the northwestern part of the State. Sev- 

 eral other times that month and next he visited 

 the same locality, and always found them nu- 

 merous. On one occasion, he notes, " at least 

 fifty pairs are nesting within less than a mile." 

 In February, 1885, Mr. B. W. Evermann sup- 

 plied me with a manuscript list of the birds he 

 had observed in Carroll County — which is prob- 

 ably forty miles south of the locality referred 

 to by Mr. Coale — and therein notes the species 

 under consideration as a " rare summer resi- 

 dent." In a memorandum of observations 



Copyright, 1888, by r. H. Cakpenteb and F. B. Webstbk. 



