MAY 21 1887 
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Lincoln’s Finch (Melospiza lincolni) breeding in Hamilton County, 
N. Y. — On the 13th of June, 1878, while on a fishing trip in the wilderness 
of New York, my companions and myself were skirting (two on one side 
and two on the other) a beautiful little pond in Hamilton County, N. Y., 
which is dignified with the name of “ Moose Lake,” when one of the party 
from the opposite side called across to me, “ Ho you want a bird’s nest ? ” 
On my expressing surprise at such an unnecessary question, he shouted 
back as his excuse, “ 0, it is nothing but a little brown bird.” Such is 
the deplorable ignorance of the majority of mankind. The little brown 
bird turned out to be Melospiza lincolni. 
On arriving on the opposite side of the pond, I found the bird, driven 
from her nest by my friend, had not returned; we therefore retired a little, 
and in a few minutes she came back to her treasures and was sacrificed to 
science. The nest was placed on the ground, where it was almost spongy 
with water, within about two rods of the pond, and about the same dis- 
tance from the edge of the forest. It was not under the protection of 
any bush or stone, but was quite well concealed in some last year’s tall 
grass. It was composed entirely of dried grasses both inside and out, 
the lining being neatly made of the finer spears, and contained three 
eggs, a few days advanced in incubation. These measured .74 X .56. 
The ground was a pale greenish, covered with spots and blotches of dif- 
ferent shades of reddish-brown. On one of them the spots were so nu- 
merous as to become confluent and almost conceal the ground-color, while 
on another they were much smaller, so that the greenish-white of the 
ground-color was the predominant tint, except at the large end, where the 
spots became larger and more confluent, as indeed they did on all three. 
This Moose Lake is a small body of water situated about fifteen miles 
northeast of Wilmurt P. 0., Herkimer County, and must not be con- 
founded with its larger namesakes, which are situated farther north, — 
Moose in Herkimer County, Big Moose on the line, and North Moose in 
Hamilton County. The outlets of these three all empty into the Moose 
River, while that of the one here referred to runs into the West Canada 
Creek. This I think is farther south than the Lincoln’s Finch has been 
found breeding east of the Great Lakes, and, in fact, is but little north of 
Racine, which is the southern limit of its breeding, according to Baird, 
Brewer, and Ridgway’s “History of North American Birds.” Nor can 
I, with the limited number of books at my command, find any record of 
the bird having been taken in this part of the State. — Egbert Bagg, Jr., 
Utica, N. Y. Bull. N.O.O, 8,Oct., 1878, p. f97~ *+£'* 
