Page:The Auk 1884 Volume 1 (IA auk1884amer).pdf/21

﻿ feathers showing a band of dull white, succeeded by a broad black tip: breast slaty, becoming dull white on the throat; abdomen white, tinged with very pale rutous; a line of black passing from the top of the eye along the sides of the head to the neck; under surface of wings white, becoming dark brown at the tips; the shafts of the feathers on the breast and throat dark brown, forming numerous hair-like lines on the surface of the plumage; legs and feet greenish-yellow: upper mandible black; under mandible green at the base, shading into black at the tip; iris yellow.

Length: 14.50; wing, S. 5o; tail, 3.75: tarsus, 3.75; bill, 1.50.

The sexes appear to be similar. 

 NOTES ON THE SUMMER BIRDS OF BERKSHIRE COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.

no other area of similar extent in Massachusetts has held out as inviting a field to the ornithologist as Berkshire. County. Owing to its elevated, mountainous character it has been long suspected to harbor certain northern birds not known to summer elsewhere, at least regularly, within our limits. and speculations have been more or less freely indulged in by writers as to the species that breed there. But rather curiously no one—or at least no competent observer—seems to have cut the Gordian knot by investigating he region at the proper season, so that at this late date we actually have no definite information regarding it. With the hope of doing something towards filling this blank I visited the county last summer (1883) and explored the northern portion of it.—rather hurriedly it must be confessed, but still with sufficient thoroughness to acquire very much more than a superficial knowledge of its summer birds. My stay extended from June z1 to June 29, thus embracing a fair share of that brief period when the waves of migration are at rest, and birds of nearly every kind engaged in reproduction. Hence it is reasonable to assume that all the species found in numbers were established for the summer and breeding. This consideration is important inasmuch as I found but few nests.