Marshall J. 1944 Check-List of Kansas Birds W. S. LONG, Salt Lake City, Utah It has been more than twenty years since the publication of a complete list of the birds of Kansas. During this time a great many new forms have been added to the list, and additional information has been gathered as to the status of many subspecies which interbreed within the state. Much still remains to be done before a complete study can be made, but it is felt that enough additional data have been gathered to justify publishing another list at this time. Western Kansas still offers an open field of study for someone living there who is willing to devote a great deal of hard, but pleasant work, and most of his (or her) spare time to it. Information as to the winter birds of western Kansas is particularly desirable. Kansas is approximately four hundred miles long, from east to west, and two hundred miles wide. For the most part, it appears to the casual traveler to be a wide, flat monotonous plain, without a break except where the infrequent streams have cut deeply into the rocks. However, there is a gradual rise in elevation from 750 feet in the east, at Kansas City, to more than 4,000 feet in Wallace county, near the Colorado line. In the early days most of the state was covered with a growth of prairie grasses, but during the last twenty-five years wheat has become an important crop, and much of the prairie sod has been plowed up. In certain sections of the western half of the state one can drive an automobile for an hour at a time and see nothing but wheat fields as far as the eye can reach. As a result, many of the prairie birds which formerly abounded no longer exist in the region. The western two-thirds of the state is largely treeless, except for narrow strips along the streams, where scattering groves of cottonwood or willow are found. Drainage is to the east and southeast, except in the extreme northwestern corner, where it is to the northeast. The rivers, for the most part, are wide, shallow streams, with a very slight flow of water, except in infrequent times of flood. In the extreme southwest, the Cimarron is dry for the greater part of the year. In the east, however, the rivers are large and fairly deep, carrying a good volume of water. The most important rivers of the state are the Republican, Smoky Hill, Kansas, Arkansas, Cimarron and Neosho. The Missouri river forms the northeastern border of the state, but has little effect upon the fauna, except in a very limited area. The Arkansas and the Cimarron are the most important to the bird life of the state, since they form broad highways from the Rocky Mountain region, down which a very pronounced wave of western birds comes every winter. Not enough work has been done in this region in winter to determine the full extent of numbers and species of birds which move down these rivers into western Kansas. Geographically, Kansas is in the zone of intergradation of most of the eastern and western subspecies, as well as some of the northern and southern Trans. Kansas Acad. Science, Vol. 43, 1940. (433) 28-5301