heard the delightful song of the Ruby-crowned Wren again and again; what would I give to find the nest of this northern Humming-Bird? We found the Fox-colored Sparrow in full song, and had our captain been up to birds' ways, he would have found its nest; for one started from his feet, and doubtless from the eggs, as she fluttered off with drooping wings, and led him away from the spot, which could not again be found. John and Co. found an island with upwards of two hundred nests of the Lams canus,[1] all with eggs, but not a young one hatched. The nests were placed on the bare rock; formed of seaweed, about six inches in diameter within, and a foot without; some were much thicker and larger than others; in many instances only a foot apart, in others a greater distance was found. The eggs are much smaller than those of Larus marinus. The eggs of the Cayenne Tern,[2]
- ↑ Common Gull. This record raises an interesting question, which can hardly be settled satisfactorily. Larus canus, the common Gull of Europe, is given by various authors in Audubon's time, besides himself, as a bird of the Atlantic coast of North America, from Labrador southward. But it is not known as such to ornithologists of the present day. The American Ornithologists' Union catalogues L. canus as merely a straggler in North America, with the query, "accidental in Labrador?" In his Notes on the Ornithology of Labrador, in Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci., Phila. 1861, p. 246, Dr. Coues gives L. delawarensis, the Ring-billed Gull, three specimens of which he procured at Henley Harbor, Aug. 21, 1860. These were birds of the year, and one of them, afterward sent to England, was identified by Mr. Howard Saunders as L. canus (P. Z. S. 1877, p. 178; Cat. B. Brit. Mus., xxv. 1896, p. 281). This would seem to bear out Audubon's Journal; but the "Common American Gull" of his published works is the one he calls L. zonorhynchus (i. e., L. delawarensis), and on p. 155 of the Birds of Am., 8vo ed., he gives the very incident here narrated in his Journal, as pertaining to the latter species. The probabilities are that, notwithstanding Dr. Coues' finding of the supposed L. canus in Labrador, the whole Audubonian record really belongs to L. delawarensis.—E. C.
- ↑ This appears to be an error, reflected in all of Audubon's published works. The Cayenne Tern of Audubon, as described and figured by him, is Sterna regia, which has never been known to occur in Labrador. Audubon never knew the Caspian Tern, S. tschegrava, and it is believed that this is the species which he saw in Labrador, and mistook for the Cayenne Tern— as he might easily do. See Coues, Birds of the Northwest, 1874, p. 669, where the case is noted.—E. C.
