Image from the Biodiversity Heritage Library.
Contributed by Harvard University, Museum of Comparative Zoology, Ernst Mayr Library.
| www.biodiversitylibrary.org
Transcription
58
UPTON, MAINE
1873
September 21 - 22
skiff. I found that stream much swollen by the late rains,
flowing nearly bank full with a rapid current. Shot six birds
the best a Parus hudsonius in full fall plumage. L. T. Brown
came in this evening from Bethel and Barstow started up the
Megalloway this morning with F. S. Flint. The steamboat was
"hung up" at the mouth of the Cambridge River while attempting
to run in in the dark this evening.
September 21. (Sunday) Clear and cold. Spent the day about the
house, in P.M. skinning the birds shot yesterday. Fished an
hour or so in the river with my new rod and caught two small
fish. The sunset was extremely fine this evening, the changing
forests being fairly flooded with brilliant light.
September 22. Clear and warmer than past few days. After break-
fast took a trip up Cambridge river in the skiff and shot six
birds, two Parus hudsonius etc. This bird (P.hudsonius) has not
a single note like P.atricapillus: the note described under
August 11 is frequently preluded by the sharp che-chit or chee-
chit-chit, and the single chirp corresponding to that of P.atri-
capillus is much louder and more petulant and not in any way to
be confounded with it. These three sets of notes are the only
ones I have heard to be sure of, though the bird will sometimes
give a sputtering combination of them all in rapid succession.
It is on the whole much more silent and less cheery than P.a tri.,
keeps almost exclusively in the firs and spruces very high up,
has a heavier and more clumsy flight, and although often seen
near, does not as a rule associate with that species. Heard