preparatory to a leisurely pedestrian journey of some three hundred
miles across the state to Independence, where they were to join the
large caravan under Captain Nathaniel J. Wyeth, bound for the Columbia
River country. On April 28th the party left Independence over the
frontier trail to Westport, distant approximately fourteen miles. Some
time during the day Nuttall, who was primarily a botanist and is said
to have carried no gun, took, or had taken for him by some member of
the party, the type specimen of Harris’s Sparrow which he named the
Mourning Finch (_Fringilla querula_). Nuttall writes: “We observed
this species, which we at first took for the preceding [White-crowned
Sparrow], a few miles to the west of Independence, in Missouri, towards
the close of April. It frequents thickets, uttering in the morning, and
occasionally at other times, a long, drawling, monotonous and solemn
note _te de de de_. We heard it again on the 5th of May, not far from
the banks of the Little Vermilion, of the Kansa.”[3]
[Illustration: _ROUTE TAKEN BY TOWNSEND & NUTTALL ON APRIL 28, 1834.
ARROWS INDICATE PROBABLE TYPE NEIGHBORHOOD OF Z. QUERULA._]
The information contained in this short paragraph is the only guide the
writer has had in a search for the spot where the species was first
met with. Not a little difficulty has been experienced in tracing the
road between Independence and Westport in use in the early thirties,
since but meager graphic record of its course has been preserved. The
accompanying sketch map is in the main authentic, authorities differing
as to only a short stretch about three miles from old Westport. Many
years association with the birds of this region leads the writer to the
conclusion that these scientists would have had difficulty in crossing
the Blue Valley at this season of the year without seeing or hearing
troops of these striking Sparrows. That part of the road lying within
the valley is indicated on the map by arrows.
Townsend’s frame of mind on this momentous day is best described in his
own words. “On the 28th of April, at 10 o’clock in the morning, our
caravan, consisting of seventy men, and two hundred and fifty horses,
began its march; Captain Wyeth and Milton Sublette took the lead, Mr.
N.[uttall] and myself rode beside them; then the men in double file,
each leading, with a line, two horses heavily laden, and Captain Thing
[Captain W.’s assistant] brought up the rear. The band of missionaries,
with their horned cattle, rode along the flanks.
“I frequently sallied out from my station to look at and admire the
appearance of the cavalcade, and as we rode out from the encampment,
our horses prancing, and neighing, and pawing the ground, it was
altogether so exciting that I could scarcely contain myself. Every man
in the company seemed to feel a portion of the same kind of enthusiasm;
uproarious bursts of merriment, and gay and lively songs, were
constantly echoing along the line. We were certainly a most merry and
happy company. What cared we for the future? We had reason to expect
ere long difficulties and dangers, in various shapes, would assail us,
but no anticipation of reverses could check the happy exuberance of our
spirits.
“Our road lay over a vast rolling prairie, with occasional small spots
of timber at the distance of several miles apart, and this will no
doubt be the complexion of the track for some weeks.
“In the afternoon we crossed the Big Blue River at a shallow ford. Here
we saw a number of the beautiful Yellow-headed Troopials, (_Icterus
zanthrocephalus_) feeding upon the prairie in company with large flocks
of Blackbirds, and like these, they often alight upon the backs of our
horses.”[4]
Here is a vivid picture of a situation well calculated to stir the
imagination and excite the enthusiasm of this twenty-five year old
easterner on his first visit to the virgin West, and thoughts of
ornithological discoveries were no doubt reserved for the future.
Nuttall could not have been so distracted by the excitement incident to
the departure of this wild cavalcade, since he had had several previous
experiences of the wilderness, was an older man, and was by nature
“shy, solitary, contemplative, and of abstract manner.” At all events
he set the ornithological pace immediately at the start of the journey
by discovering a new bird. Townsend’s silence in his ‘Narrative’
regarding this important event was of course due to courtesy to the
discoverer who had not yet given his species to science.
In my account of Nuttall’s discovery of his “Mourning Finch,” I have
assumed that the specimen he took in Jackson County is the type.
Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that in the absence of any
definite knowledge regarding the type specimen it is presumed from his
description that the specimen here taken was the type. The description
referred to was published in the second edition of his Manual (the
volume on water birds being a reprint of the first edition) which did
not appear until 1840. It will thus be seen that this important species
was allowed to remain in obscurity for six years while twenty-four
other new species subsequently discovered on the trip had been
described, as well as sixteen figured by Audubon in the Great Work,
prior to the appearance of Townsend’s Narrative in 1839. Nuttall’s
published description of the bird is merely the briefest possible
outline of salient specific characters, no measurements whatever being
given.
On his return to the East, two years in advance of Townsend, Nuttall
had in his possession a quantity of the latter’s material for delivery
to the Philadelphia Academy of Sciences, which Institution had helped
substantially in financing the travelers. It was this material that
Audubon sought so eagerly to possess, that his great work then nearing
completion might not lack the new species.[5] Audubon had called on
Nuttall, in Boston, in the hope of assistance from that quarter, and
was promised duplicates of all the new species in his possession. It is
said that five species were here secured, but the Mourning Finch was
not included. Nuttall had reserved this discovery for his own book, and
not only was posterity thereby deprived of an Havell engraving of the
largest and handsomest of our Sparrows, but Audubon, being kept in the
dark, was himself to later publish the bird as the discovery of his
friend Edward Harris.[6]
On the same day that Townsend and Nuttall were so picturesquely
entering the Indian country, Maximilian, Prince of Wied, who had spent
the previous year on the upper Missouri, was making his way down-stream
on his return to civilization. On May 13, 1834, when but a few miles
from the northern boundary of Missouri, his hunters took specimens of
a bird new to him. In the second volume of his published journal,[7]
he says: “It was toward eight o’clock in the cool morning of May 13
(1834) that we stopped on the right bank of the river and landed on
a fine, green prairie, beset with bushes and high isolated trees....
We found many beautiful birds, among which _Icteria viridis_ and the
handsome Grosbeak with red breast _Fringilla ludoviciana_.... At noon
we reached Belle-Vue, Major Dougherty’s Agency.... To the naturalist
the surroundings of Belle-Vue were highly attractive. The beautiful
wooded hills had shady ravines and small wild valleys.... Many, and
some of them beautiful, birds animated these lovely thickets, the
Cuckoo, the Carolina Dove, the Red-breasted Grosbeak, _Sialia wilsoni_,
several Finches, among which _Fringilla cyanea_ and _erythropthalma_,
and of about the same size a new species which at least in Audubon’s
Synopsis of the year 1839 is not enumerated and which I called
_Fringilla comata_ (2)”[8] The (2) in the text refers to a note at
the end of the chapter where a description of the Harris’s Sparrow
is given in great detail, and where the statement is made that “this
bird nests in thickets along the shore of the Missouri River in the
neighborhood of the mouth of La Platte River.” The first volume
of Maximilian’s journal, containing the record of his trip up the
Missouri, was published in 1839, while volume two, covering the period
when the Sparrow was taken, did not appear until 1841. Had he published
both volumes simultaneously in 1839, his specific name _comata_ would
of course be current. It is interesting to note that though he took
his first specimen just fifteen days after Nuttall had taken the type,
and at a time when the bulk of the migrants had passed north, he had
overlooked an opportunity of being the actual discoverer during the
previous April, when he had been in the direct migratory path of the
Sparrow at the season of its greatest abundance there.
Nuttall himself had overlooked an opportunity of discovering the
bird twenty-four years earlier, and had his attention at that time
been directed to birds as well as plants, he would no doubt have
become acquainted with the species. Referring to the Journal of his
companion,[9] John Bradbury, an English botanist, it is found that they
passed through this region during the spring migration of 1810, and
while Nuttall’s absent-minded preoccupation in collecting plants was a
standing joke among the voyageurs, Bradbury was somewhat more alive to
ornithological possibilities, and has left many entertaining, and a few
valuable notes on the better known birds. They had spent April 8th and
9th at Fort Osage, now Sibley, Jackson County, Missouri; and the writer
knows of no more certain place to find Harris’s Sparrows in early April
than in the timber and thickets of this bottom land.
The Lewis and Clark party had passed through this region in June,
1804, and again early in September, 1806, and Thomas Say of the Long
Expedition had been here in August, 1819. Maximilian was therefore the
first ornithologist to enter the range of this species while the birds
were in transit.
The last “discoverer” was Edward Harris, in whose honor Audubon gave
the bird its vernacular name. The memorable voyage of Audubon and
Harris, together with Bell, Sprague, and Squires, up the Missouri
River in 1843 is too well known to require comment. A few quotations
will serve in connection with the story of the Sparrow. On May 2 the
party passed the point in Jackson County, Missouri, where Nuttall
and Townsend had left the river nine years previously. Early the next
morning they reached Fort Leavenworth. After leaving this post the
boat was stranded on a sand-bar from 5 o’clock in the evening until
10 the next morning, giving the naturalists considerable time to do
some collecting in the neighborhood. In his famous journal[10] of the
voyage, Audubon says under date of May 4: “Friend Harris shot two or
three birds which we have not yet fully established.... Caught ...
a new Finch.” And on the next day he states: “On examination of the
Finch killed by Harris yesterday, I find it to be a new species, and
I have taken its measurements across this sheet of paper.” In volume
seven of the octavo edition of his ‘Birds of America,’ where the new
species taken on the trip are described, the remarks under the Sparrow
are as follows: “The discovery of this beautiful bird is due to my
excellent and constant friend Edward Harris, who accompanied me on my
late journey to the upper Missouri River, &c., and after whom I have
named it, as a memento of the grateful feelings I will always entertain
towards one ever kind and generous to me.”
“The first specimen seen was procured May 4, 1843, a short distance
below the Black Snake Hills. I afterwards had the pleasure of seeing
another whilst the steamer Omega was fastened to the shore, and the
crew engaged in cutting wood.
“As I was on the look-out for novelties, I soon espied one of these
Finches, which, starting from the ground only a few feet from me,
darted on, and passed through the low tangled brushwood too swiftly
for me to shoot on the wing. I saw it alight at a great distance, on
the top of a high tree, and my several attempts to approach it proved
ineffectual; it flew from one to another treetop as I advanced, and
at last rose in the air and disappeared. During our journey up stream
my friend Harris, however, shot two others, one of which proved a
female, and another specimen was procured by Mr. J. G. Bell, who was
also one of my party. Upon our return voyage, my friend Harris had the
good fortune to shoot a young one, supposed to be a female, near Fort
Crogan, on the fifth of October, which I have figured along with a fine
male. The female differing in nothing from the latter.
“All our exertions to discover the nest of this species were fruitless,
and I concluded by thinking that it proceeds further northward to
breed.”
The work in which this supposed discovery was announced was published
in 1844, four years after the second edition of Nuttall’s ‘Manual’
appeared. Since this manual was the first American work on ornithology,
excepting Wilson’s, to go into a second edition, it was presumably
widely known among ornithologists, and it is not easy to understand why
Audubon and his coworkers were in ignorance of their lack of claim to
Nuttall’s Mourning Finch.
During the twenty-five or thirty years following Audubon’s visit to
the Missouri haunts of the Sparrow, practically nothing was learned of
its life-history or distribution, and the few scattered specimens that
were taken were all from the same general region. A specimen furnished
by Lieut. Couch, taken at Fort Leavenworth on October 21, 1854, formed
part of the material used by Prof. Baird in his epochal work in 1858,
as did another taken at the same point on April 21, 1856, by Dr.
Hayden, of Lieut. Warren’s Pacific Coast Surveys party. Dr. Hayden took
three other specimens further up the river in the same year. Dr. P. R.
Hoy, who collected in the type region in 1854, took a specimen on May
7, and on May 13 met with a troop of fifteen or twenty. There are a few
other records from the Missouri Valley and one from Texas (Dresser,
Ibis, 1865) prior to the numerous ornithological activities of the
early seventies. Dr. J. A. Allen, collecting in the interest of the
Museum of Comparative Zoölogy, had his headquarters at Fort Leavenworth
during the first ten days of May, 1871, and found Harris’s Sparrows
exceedingly abundant in the bottom timber on the Missouri side of the
river. He added a few field notes on behavior, appearance, etc, and
took a series of specimens. Baird, Brewer, and Ridgway state that from
the time of its discovery in 1834 up to 1872 but little information
had been obtained in regard to the Sparrow’s general habits, its
geographical distribution, or its mode of breeding, single specimens
only having been taken at considerable intervals in the valley of the
Missouri and elsewhere. In 1874 Dr. Coues brought together all the
available data in his interesting article on the bird in ‘Birds of the
Northwest,’ but was able to add nothing in determining the bounds of
its habitat, which he gave as “Region of the Missouri. East to Eastern
Iowa.”
It was not until ten years later that enough information had
accumulated to warrant an attempt at defining the limits of its range
and the periods of its migration. This was done by the painstaking and
accurate Wells W. Cooke in the first volume of ‘The Auk,’ in 1884. In
this article, ‘Distribution and Migration of _Zonotrichia querula_,’
he was able only in a very general and indefinite way to give the
western and southern extent of the range, but the eastern limits remain
practically as he defined them.
In 1913 Professor Cooke noted the interesting peculiarity of the
migration of the Harris’s Sparrow in the interval that elapses after
the first spring advance. He states[11] that the birds become common
along the Missouri River in northwestern Iowa soon after the middle of
March and yet it is not until early May that they are noted a few miles
further north in southeastern South Dakota and southwestern Minnesota.
He adds that the dates suggest the probability that these March birds
have wintered unnoticed in the thick bushes of the bottomlands not far
distant, and have been attracted to the open country by the first warm
days of spring. This theory is borne out by the facts as observed by
the writer in the Kansas City region. The birds are present in this
vicinity during even the most severe winters, but keep to the dense
shelter of the Missouri bottoms. During mild and open winters a few
scattered flocks may even spend the entire season until spring in the
hedges and weed patches of the prairie country.
This Sparrow has always attracted attention in the field by its large
size and conspicuously handsome appearance, as well as by its sprightly
and vivacious manner and querulous notes, but it has seldom been the
subject of special notice in the literature of American birds. Its
bibliography is chiefly confined to diagnostic listing in formal works
on ornithology, brief annotations in faunal lists, and occasional
mention in published field notes.
During the thirty-four years that have elapsed since Prof. Cooke’s
article of 1884, the Sparrow, as a migrant, has become well known to
ornithologists. Its narrow migration path, the center of which in
the United States is approximately down the 96th meridian, has been
worked out; the wide extent of territory covered by stragglers has been
fully reported;[12] the food habits of the bird while on migration
have been thoroughly investigated and the results published;[13] the
nest has been seen once,[14] and young just out of the nest have been
collected,[15] and the general region of the breeding ground itself
is known to be where barren tundra meets the edge of the timber
between Hudson Bay and Great Bear Lake. But the eggs yet remain to be
discovered.
FOOTNOTES:
[3] A Manual of the Ornithology of the United States and of Canada, by
Thomas Nuttall. Second edition of the volume on Land Birds. Boston,
1840.
[4] Narrative of a Journey Across The Rocky Mountains, to the Columbia
River and a Visit to the Sandwich Islands, Chili, &c. With a Scientific
Appendix. By John K. Townsend. Philadelphia, 1839.
[5] An unbiased account of Audubon’s efforts to secure these specimens
is given in Chapter XXXI, Vol. 2, of Dr. Herrick’s recent historical
study ‘Audubon The Naturalist.’ Further light on the subject may be
found in a letter from Audubon to Harris under date of Oct. 26. 1837,
published in the Auk, Vol. XX, p. 370, by S. N. Rhoads. Audubon has
left a full account of his activities at this time in the Introduction
to Vol. 4 of the ‘Ornithological Biography.’
[6] Notes from a letter of Edward Harris, Auk, 1895, p. 227, Geo.
Spencer Morris.
[7] Reis im Innern Nord-Amerika. 2 Vols. Coblentz, 1839-1841.
[8] Having access only to a reprint of this rare work in which the
ornithological matter is largely deleted, I am indebted to Mr. Otto
Widmann for this extract which he translated from the original
publication.
[9] Travels in the Interior of America in the Years 1809, 1810, & 1811
&c. By J. Bradbury. Liverpool, 1817.
[10] Audubon and His Journals. By Maria R. Audubon. With Zoölogical and
other Notes by Elliott Coues. 2 Vols. N. Y., 1900.
[11] The Migration of North American Sparrows. Compiled by Prof. W. W.
Cooke, chiefly from data in the Biological Survey. Bird Lore, 1913, p.
301.
[12] The Status of the Harris’s Sparrow in Wisconsin and Neighboring
States. By Alvin R. Cahn. Bull. Wis. Nat. Hist. Soc., Vol. XIII, No. 2,
pp. 102-108. Also in numerous lists and field notes published in ‘The
Auk,’ ‘Wilson Bull.’ and the other bird journals.
[13] The Relation of Sparrows to Agriculture. By Sylvester A. Judd.
Bull. Biol. Surv. No. 15, 1901.
[14] Bird Records from Great Slave Lake Region. By E. T. Seton. The
Auk, 1908, p. 72.
[15] Biological Investigation of Hudson Bay Region. By E. A. Preble. N.
A. Fauna No. 22. Washington, 1901.
NOTES ON THE STRUCTURE OF THE PALATE IN THE ICTERIDÆ.
BY ALEXANDER WETMORE.
The curious keel-like, angular projection found on the palate in the
North American Grackles of the genus _Quiscalus_, recognized as one of
the prominent characters distinguishing that group of Blackbirds, is a
structure that can hardly fail to attract attention when the mouth is
examined in freshly killed specimens, or in birds preserved in spirits.
Recently, certain observations made in the field on these birds, which
will be recounted later, recalled this structure to mind and the writer
was led to make a somewhat detailed study of the palatal keel in the
Grackles, and finally to examine the appearance of the palate in other
members of the family _Icteridæ_. In these studies, carried on in the
United States National Museum, there have been available suitable
specimens representing all of the leading genera with the exception of
_Clypeicterus_, _Ocyalus_, _Lampropsar_ and _Macragelæus_. In all, one
hundred and thirteen species belonging to thirty-one genera have been
examined.
[Illustration: Fig. 1. Head of _Quiscalus quiscula æneus_.
_a_. Palatal keel (about natural size.)]
Study of skins of the genus _Quiscalus_ shows that the palatal keel
is developed as a compressed projection from the roof of the mouth,
slightly behind the center of the commissure (Fig. 1). Viewed from
the side it is truncated in front, forming an angular projection that
has a tendency to become toothed at the tip. Posteriorly it lowers to
merge finally into the level of the palate. The anterior margin is
sharp, and the posterior portion is thicker and stronger. The entire
ridge is developed as a fold in the horny sheathing of the palate, and
the surface of the premaxilla underneath is smooth and flat with no
indication of a bony ridge to support the keel.
From the examination of museum skins it appears that the palatal ridge
begins to develop in juvenile birds a short time before they leave the
nest, at a stage when the body is well covered with feathers, and the
incoming tail feathers have attained a length of 20 to 25 millimeters.
In such birds the keel appears as a very slightly raised ridge that
forms a distinct line on the palate. The bill at this time has reached
about three-fourths of the length attained when the bird is adult, so
that the beginning of this ridge appears to be located far forward,
though it occupies the same position in relation to the external nasal
opening that the fully developed keel does in the adult. In the dried
skins the ridge is somewhat indistinct, but it is possible that it may
be more readily apparent in living or recently killed specimens.
In birds that are almost fully feathered and that are about ready to
leave the nest the bill has become stronger, the raised palatal line is
heavier, and has a rounded anterior end that forms a marked projection
and then continues to merge with the palate in front. In older
specimens, able to fly but with the rectrices only 95 to 105 mm. long,
the palatal ridge was better marked, being broad and strong basally and
more slender toward the point. In a few of the specimens of this stage
examined the cutting angle seemed well developed, but in others it was
less strongly indicated. In birds that were fully grown but still in
juvenal plumage the ridge was well developed but not so prominent as in
adults. In some the basal portion was broad and rounded, verging toward
the formation of palate found in the genus _Megaquiscalus_. In others
the anterior cutting angle was more prominent but the entire ridge had
only attained from one-half to three-fourths of its full height.