Page:Auk Volume 37-1920.djvu/162

92 Wayne, Birds Taken near Charleston, S. C. [j a u n NOTES ON SEVEN BIRDS TAKEN NEAR CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA. BY ARTHUR T. WAYNE. The following observations were made for the most part near my home during the late summer and early autumn of 1918, and in a radius of about two square miles. Trips were made into this area almost daily regardless of heat. Empidonax flaviventris. Yellow-bellied Flycatcher. — Since I captured the first specimen of this bird on October 8, 1912 (Auk, XXX, 1913, 273-274), I procured an additional specimen — a young female on September 3, 1918. This bird was shot in an almost impenetrable jungle of elders and viburnum bushes in very low land and was feeding upon the berries of the latter bushes in company with a few Alder Flycatchers (Empidonax traillii alnorum). Among the hundreds, I may say thousands, of Green-crested Flycatchers (Empidonax virescens) that I have closely observed during the seasons of migration in South Carolina, Georgia and Florida, hoping to detect E. flaviventris among them, the two birds above mentioned are the only ones I have ever seen or taken during the past thirty-five years of almost un- interrupted collecting and close observations of birds. The'Yellow-bellied Flycatcher is a very rare bird in the South Atlantic States. Progne subis subis. Purple Martin. — During the early spring of 1917 — ■ the month of March, I think — an albinistic male bird of this species made its appearance at a martin house of my neighbor, about a mile away from my colony of martins, and raised its brood of young. The following year the same bird arrived sometime in the latter portion of February, and it could be noticed at a glance that there was very much more white in its plumage than during the previous year. This bird paid several visits to my martin house and I was in hopes it would mate with one of my birds and breed, but in this I was hoping against hope, because a bird goes back to its ancestral home and cannot be localized, except from the egg. This beautiful bird mated, and its mate was setting on a full complement of eggs, when on the morning of May 1, 1918, the male was picked up dead at the foot of the martin house and sent to me by Mrs. Isaac Auld. Upon preparing the specimen I could find no signs of disease nor were there any shot holes in the bird, the plumage being perfect and not a feather awry, besides it was exceedingly obese. Although Purple Martins almost invariably arrive in the vicinity of Charleston between February 16 and 22, nest building rarely begins before the end of April.