6 
Chapman, The Seaside Sparrows. 
TAuk 
LJan. 
Louisiana. Then it appeared that the birds collected by Dr. 
Fisher at Grand Isle were also referable to this form. These 
birds, with the Corpus Christi specimens just mentioned, were 
considered by Mr. Ridgway 1 to represent Fringilla macgillivraii 
described by Audubon 2 from Charleston, South Carolina, and 
said later by the same writer to also occur on the coast of Louisi- 
ana and Texas . 3 This name had previously been synonymized 
with that of Ammodramus maritimus under the belief that it was 
based on a specimen of that bird in first plumage. 
The following year Dr. Walter Faxon called attention to the 
fact 4 that Audubon’s description of macgillivraii having been 
based on specimens from Charleston, South Carolina, a locality in 
which peninsula was known to occur, the name macgillivraii was 
obviously applicable to the bird known as peninsula and not to 
the quite different bird of Louisiana. 
In attempting now to explain the peculiar conditions which 
this brief summary of current views has set forth, one is at once 
confronted with the difficulty which has beset all students of 
these birds, that is, the unusually worn plumage of breeding 
birds. So greatly does this abrasion affect a bird’s appearance 
that almost the entire range of color variation between mariti- 
mus and the Louisiana bird, respectively the lightest and darkest 
members of this restricted group, is shown in Dr. Fisher’s series 
of breeding birds from Grand Isle. Specimens in worn plumage, 
therefore, must be examined with great care and identified only 
after the closest comparison. Hence in order to clearly grasp 
the characters separating these three forms it will be necessary 
to use non-breeding examples. Thus I have selected a series of 
fall and early spring 5 birds from Long Island, N. Y., Tarpon 
1 Manual N. A. Birds, 2nd Ed., 1896, App. 602. 
2 Orn. Biog. II, 1834, 285. 
3 Ibid., IV, 1838, 394. 
4 Auk, XIV, 1897, 321. 
5 It is remarkable, in view of the rapid and extreme abrasion of the plumage 
of breeding birds, how little the plumage shows the effects of wear and tear 
during the winter. There is practically no difference between the plumage 
of'September specimens and those taken early in the following spring. 
