I 
I 
1 
I 
i 
I 
a 
$ 
0€€lRREIVCE OF THE BURROWING OW L IN 
MASSACHUSETTS. 
BY RUTHVEN DEANE. 
[Read before the Nuttall Omitholos'ical Club, 6 May.l 
The time seems to be drawino; near when anything 
relative to geographical distribution out of the common 
order of the day will not surprise the ornithologist, and 
although I intend this remark to apoly all over the 
country, it is only fair to give Eastern New England the 
lion’s share; for many of the phenomena of the past 
few years seem to have occurred in this section. The 
object of my presenting to you these few lines is to an- 
nounce the capture of a raptorial specimen which I be- 
lieve to be not only new to old Massachusetts, but to 
New England. Our members have become hardened 
during the past year by hearing of the occurrence of 
tropical species sporting in boreal climes, and since tlie 
great railway stretching from the Atlantic to the Pa- 
cific has been in operation and Pullman cars so exten- 
sively used, it is no wonder that our eastern and west- 
-ern birds should have that desire of sight-seeing and ad- 
venture that fills so many of our minds. 
Our friend in question has wandered far from his na- 
tive home, and it is my honest opinion, upon careful 
e.xamination, that it is not an escaped cage bird. The 
collecting trips in the limits of New England by several 
of our members have been extended, but as yet none of 
us have met with it. 
Our good President has not yet obtained a specimen 
during his ornithological researches in the wilds of 
Maine and in that romantic coast region known as 
Little Boar’s Head, though his quick eye and sure aim 
have laid low the docile mocking-bird and the noisy 
southern Shrike within a few miles of where we are 
now assembled. If it will not be trespassing too much 
upon the good nature of our Ex-President to allude to 
this bird in his presence, I will state that during his 
frequent tours to the lake region of Maine, the white 
hills of the Granite State, and his last spring’s collecting 
excursion to the petroleum region of Virginia, he has 
not been so fortunate as to capture this, to him, ill- 
omened bird, but “all’s well that ends well,” for he has 
recently been presented with the heart of his destroyer. 
But to the point. 
I happened into the rooms of our well known Boston 
taxidermist, Mr. Chas. I. Goodale, but twenty-four 
hours ago and learned from him the fact of its capture. 
On the 4th of May, Messrs. H. Joyce and J. K. Clif- 
ford, two accomplished sportsmen, were hunting snipe 
on the extensive marshes of Newburyport. They had 
shot two or three species of hawks for their ornitholog- 
ical friends and calling upon nature for more good luck 
were soon rewarclgd by cutting down a magnificent 
specimen of the Yellow Rail. The more a man gets 
the more he wants. They had struck upon a rich fauna 
and were evidently determined to make themselves 
equal to a Brewster, a Henshaw, a Maynard or a Pur- 
die. The time, however, soon came forilieir notoriety, 
and our small brown companion was seen sitting upon 
a little mound at a short distance off. 
Being absent from his holy land he could not vanish 
into the bowels of the Earth. There was no hole at the 
foot of the mound, no barking prairie dog or hissing 
rattle-snake to comfort him in his new home and feeling 
rather ill at ease he took to roving and his evolutions as 
described by Mr. Joyce resembled a ball of tow in the 
wind. The charge of the light brigade lliat followed 
has as I have previously stated added another bird to 
Dr. Brewer’s new list of the Birds of New England. 
Where did this Burrowing Owl come from is the 
question now to be discussed. Did he lake passage on 
the owl train from Salt Lake City, or did the i educed 
fares of Florida steamets induce Mr. Ridgway’s new 
variety to come North and speculate in the recently dis- 
covered gold and silver mines of Newburyport?. Can 
it be possible that there was an unblown egg of this bird 
in the cabinet of our Club Room and that during some 
hot discussion it was hatched and mingled with fear and 
guilt at the sight of that beautiful painting of the type 
snecimen of II. ieucoirorac/tiVihs, which has recently been 
executed by a skillful artist of Smithsonian fame, and 
which now adorns our walls, it took flight and hence 
found its way to the coast. Concord and Lexington 
doubtless did not neglect to extend their centennial 
invitations to the fowls of the air both East and West 
of the Mississippi, which may partially account. But 
“we can’t most always sometimes” tell for certainly, the 
order of the day will soon be changed and the Dodo 
will sit upon the Common and watch the Great Auk 
sport in the Frog Pond (provided the English Sparrows 
do not conquer.) 
I had the pleasure of handling the specimen in the 
flesh and without comparison should say that it’ was 
rather smaller than the average and of very light 
plumage, having that bleached look similar to speci- 
mens of the Short-eared Owls collected at Muskegat 
Island by Messrs. Brewster and Maynard. The bird 
proved to be a male and Mr. Goodale the present owner 
of the specimen has mounted it in his usual artistic 
style. 

DISAPPEARANCE OF CERTAIN SONG-BIRDS. 
BY AL.ASKA. 
We have taken always a lively interest in the song 
birds, that cheer and enliven the surroundings of our 
home in the country, and although we have no visita- 
tion of foreigners like the English Sparrow complained 
of in the cities, still the controversy in regard to the 
behavior of this little John Bull, touches a good deal of 
ground outside of the field of battle, in which Dre. 
Coues and Brewer have taken the lead pro atid cun. and 
certain causes which we have observed here may per- 
haps be greatly instrumenial, if not wholly so, in effect- 
ing those changes wl-.ich are by some ascribed to the 
pugilistic character of the sparrow. 
We have noticed during the last ten years that in our 
locality, an irregular appearance from year to year has 
been made by several common birds, which are ren- 
dered especially so by their familiar habits about our 
doors, yard and orchards, such as the robin, blue-bird, 
the golden crowned wren {Regulus calendula) cat-bird, 
blue jay, black-birds, (Z. carvlinenm) and half a dozen 
other species not quite so common to the general 
observer, r. e. the woodwarblers, shrikes, etc., for in- 
stance, three or four successive seasons would be well 
represented by the robin, then it would almost disap- 
pear in the next one or two, and an unusual number of 
jay birds come in and they in turn give place to others 
which would predominate in rotation. 
This we for some time were in the habit of accounting 
for by the character of the winters, but found in the 
long run that it was not a satisfactory reason, and in 
looking for the true cause, we have come to the follow- 
ing conclusions, which we briefly present. 
1st. As any one bird breeds many consecutive sea- 
sons in quiet, it becomes so numerous as to invite some 
special persecution eitlier as epidemic, or the attack 
of some natural enemy. We have seen and everybody 
knows that the blue jay will destroy eggs of other birds 
in the most wanton determined manner; and we have 
seen shrikes so numerous and savage as to catch almost 
every blue-bird and song-sparrow about, and after 
crushing their skulls, would leave the bodies hanging up 
by the necks, jammed in the twig crotches of nearly 
every tree; this action of Collyrw, in thus catching and 
treating small birds has been also closely watched in 
detail by a neighbor and friend, Mr. Charles Pease, Jr., 
who for a time one season was greatly puzzled day after 
day, to find so many little birds hung up in the forks of 
the branches by the heads, but finally solved the mys- 
tery by getting sight of a shrike as it caught a red pol) 
{Aegiothus Unaria, ) and broke its skull in by a blow of 
the powerful beak and then deliberately jammed the 
mutilated head into the fork of a branch, leaving the 
body to dangle untouched, and so on with bird after 
bird, until the indignation of the observer became so 
great as to cause him to destroy in turn the bird fiend. 
Then again the attention of the writer has been 
called to the fact that the common red-squirrel will visit 
nests of the robin and other birds, and when the young 
are hntched, catch them by the necks in pure wanton 
mischief and toss the unhappy chicks out to the ground 
below and death 
And secondly, it is not clear to the writer that our 
birds are altogether given from year to year to favoring 
the forests or meadows of their nativity to the exclu- 
sion of all other ground unless driven from such locali- 
ties; birds are not sown broadcast over the earth so as to 
be evenly and uniformly distributed any more than nat- 
ural life is. Last spring (April 10) the robin was 
scarcely seen or heard in the trees and shrubbery about 
the writer’s ground, but now, this year, there are 
hundreds of them in the best possible trim, and an 
unusual number of song sparrows (Melospisa melodia) 
which were in good numbers also last year, and the 
season before. 
Now, we may have to chronicle the utter absence of 
the song sparrow next spring and some observer else- 
where will note their re-appearance in his locality after 
an absence of several seasons and so on. 
So with ever varying conditions of food supplies and 
the existence of natural enemies, our song birds are 
kept along about so, and in common with all other life 
not disturbed by man, they are permitted to reach a 
maximum limit of increase in a state of nature and 
never to go much beyond or behind this line; but the 
country in which they live is so wide and long that the 
writer is well inclined to believe that it is not intended 
that the whole of it shall be eccupied by them during 
any one season. 
A CONVENTION for the purpose of organizing a State 
Sportsman Association will be held in the city of Oma- 
ha on the 28th day of May, 1875, at 10 a. m. Each or- 
ganized sportsmen’s club in the State will be entitled to 
a representation of five delegates, to be selected by their 
respective clubs. We earnestly invite all sportsmen of 
the State to organize local clubs and send delegates to 
the convention. The object and purpose of the associa- 
tion will be to secure united and friendly action be- 
tween sportsmen and other citizens througliout the State 
in the observance of the game and fish laws and the pro- 
tection of game and fish from wanton destruction. B. 
E. B. Kennedy, Chairman Com. of Omaha Sportsman 
Club; W. M. Welty, Chairman Com. Fremont Sports- 
man C ub; A. Tuxbury, Chairman Com. Nebraska City 
Club; S. M. Chapman, Chairman Com. Plattsmouth. 
Club; J. H. Post, Chairman Com. Blair Club. 
Hdntino. Fishing and Pleasure Excursions to 
Colorado. — The St. Louis, Kansas City & Northern 
Railway has just published a new and illustrated Guido 
to Colorado, (season of 1875), giving a brief description 
of the famous Ilesorte in the Rocky Mountain Regions, 
also rates of fare. This Guide contains valuable infor- 
mation for Sportsmen and Invalids. Free. Send for 
copy. Address C. K. Lord, General Passenger Agent, 
St. Louis, ;Mo. This is a magnificent sporting region, 
unsurpassed in the Union. The officials are accommo- 
dating, the cars clean, comfortable and punctual. W® 
speak by experience. 
