100 
THE CONDOR 
Vol. XIJI 
hence it is not so very strange that we ofttimes hear of folk who believe that swal- 
lows hibernate in mud at the bottom of ponds, and that on pleasant davs the sun 
w^arnis them into life and renewed activity. 
Only once was the Purple Martin seen by me in that country. This was on 
June 11, 1904, when a pair of these birds, accompanied by some Cliff Swallows that 
were always hanging around, stopped to rest for a while upon the clothesline in 
my dooryard at Medicine Root. To my regret, they moved on and were seen no 
more. 
Other rare bird occurrences came to my notice on Pine Ridge reservation. I 
saw a male Crimson-headed Tanager iPiranga hidoviciana) near Grass Creek on 
June 3, 1905. Three Western Blue Grosbeaks ( (iiiiraca caenilea lazula) , all males, 
tarried about my station in the valley of that creek for several days late in May of 
the same year. In that vicinity, also, a White-winged Crossbill was seen on a single 
occasion the following winter. A flock of about twenty common Redpoll Linnets 
[ Acauthis linaria) alighted on a tree at Medicine Root in Februar}^ 1904. They 
were most ridiculously tame, and did not take flight until I, whose marksmanship 
is certainly nothing to boast of, had approached so near as to be able to decapitate 
one of the birds with a bullet from a twenty-two caliber rifle. The linnets then 
flew away, uttering a note somewhat resembling that of the American Goldfinch. 
Interesting though they are, cases of raras aves that are seen once or a few 
times in a particular region as mere stragglers, do not compare in importance with 
instances of the gradual increase in numbers of uncommon birds throughout a 
given territory. Take the Black-throated Bunting, or Dickcissel {Spiza ameri- 
cana), for example. This is a bird whose kind haunt every hedge-row in Illinois. 
When a boy I knew the bird well, and early learned his name through the medium 
of one of a set of picture-cards advertising a particular brand of saleratus! On one 
of these cards was the likeness of the dickcissel, reproduced from an illustration in 
.some standard book on ornithology. But in his habitat in Illinois, he w’as not, I 
must admit, of especial interest to me. This no doubt was because he there ap- 
peared a fixed feature of the ordinary, unchangeable run of Nature’s everyday 
affairs. In that district of Dakota where I so long sojourned, however, I saw the 
bird in a different character — as soon as I .saw him there at all! For he exemplified 
the gradual advance of a species into territory aforetime unoccupied by it. 
The points where I was stationed in South Dakota were all on the Pine Ridge 
Indian reservation, a tract of country about one hundred miles long and sixty miles 
wide. During the almost three years, from October, 1901, to July, 1904, when I 
was located at Medicine Root Creek, I traveled about, as usual, over the reserva- 
tion a great deal. Nevertheless, on no occasion throughout this period did I see, 
or hear of, a Black-throated Bunting. I left the reservation in July, 1904, and re- 
turned in April, 1905, taking up my abode on Grass Creek, about forty miles west 
of my former station. Here, on July 9,- 1905, among some rose bushes in a 
branch of the main creek-valle^y I saw a male Black-throated Bunting. This, the 
first of the species recorded by me up to that time, was also the only one seen that 
season. But the next summer, that of 1906, I saw, beginning June 13, a number 
of these birds on Wounded Knee creek, five or six miles from the spot where the 
solitary bunting of 1905 was found. In July, 1907, when I crossed Wounded 
Knee, there were some of the birds at the same place, and, I estimated, in increased 
numbers. I visited Medicine Root, also, when on the same trip, and not far from 
the mouth of that stream, on a level tract, I perceived a number of buntings. At 
Lake Creek, in 1907, on June 13 — mark the date! — they suddenly appeared in con- 
siderable force', and became immediately common. The character of the bird-music 
